Name: To Make a Pigeon Pie
Ingredients: 4 pigeons, cleaned and picked; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 4 tablespoons fine fresh butter; 4 eggs; 1 beef steak; water; top crust for pie

Why it works: Pepper and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Make a Pigeon Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pie

Season the pigeons with salt and pepper, and place a tablespoon of butter inside each.
Add the necks, gizzards, livers, pinions, and hearts to the pigeons.
Place the eggs and beef steak inside the pie.
Add enough water to almost fill the dish.

Bake

Cover with the top crust and bake until well done.

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.

Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,847 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons: Form the main meat of the pie, becoming tender as they cook slowly in the dish.
Eggs: Set during baking to add structure and body to the filling.
Beef steak: Adds meaty flavour and richness to the filling as it cooks.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and moisture into the birds.

“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.