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Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeons, steak strips, ham, eggs, and pastry, baked in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the steak into thin strips about 1 inch wide and place a small piece of ham in each strip.

  2. Roll up the ham and steak strips, then dip them in a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cut the pigeons in half and sprinkle the halves with the remaining seasoning.

  4. Layer the rolled steak over the pigeons.

  5. Slice the hard boiled eggs on top.

  6. Half fill the dish with stock or water.

  7. Cover the dish.

  8. Decorate with pastry.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Scald and cleanse the feet of the pigeons.

  3. Stick the cleaned feet into the pastry after baking.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + hamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

  5. Flour + hamtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Dark, rich meat that becomes tender during long, covered baking.
Steak
Breaks down slowly in the covered dish, becoming tender and adding savoury juices.
Flour
Coats the rolled meat and thickens the cooking juices as they heat.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the rolled steak.
Pastry
Fat keeps its layers separate, giving a crisp, flaky crust when baked.

The step that matters

Cover the dish before baking. Covering traps steam so the pigeon and steak cook gently in their own juices and the stock. Without the cover, the meat can dry out and turn tough before it is tender.

“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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