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Cambridge Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeon, onions, shallots, spices, port wine, veal broth, and a buttery crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cambridge Pigeon Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Remove the gills from the pigeons and prepare them as you would for a pie.

  3. In a stew-pan, layer the trimming bits of meat with onions, shallots, salt, pepper, and mace.

  4. Add port wine and simmer over low heat.

  5. Cut the pigeon meat into 2-inch pieces and add to the pan, covering with veal broth.

  6. Simmer until the meat is three-quarters cooked, then transfer to a dish to cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare the pie crust as directed and fill it with the meat and gravy.

  2. Cover the pie and decorate as desired, then place a buttered paper over it.

  3. Bake for 2 hours in the preheated oven.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Meanwhile, reduce the remaining gravy in the stew-pan until rich, then strain and thicken with flour and butter.

  2. Add pepper, salt, lemon juice, and port wine to the sauce.

  3. Make a hole in the top of the pie and pour in the sauce before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the meat that forms the body of the pie.
Onions
Break down during simmering to add sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth to the gravy and sauce.
Veal broth
Supplies liquid and savory body to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the reduced gravy into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the thickened sauce and helps the paper-covered crust brown.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat to three-quarters cooked. Stopping before the meat is fully tender leaves room for the remaining cooking in the oven, which finishes it without drying it out. Overcooking now leaves the meat stringy and dry after baking.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, shallot, pepper, port wine, veal, butter, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, shallot, pepper, port wine, veal, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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