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Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeons, beefsteak, mushrooms, eschalot, parsley, eggs, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

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. Lightly fry the beefsteak pieces in butter until browned.

  3. Fry the pigeons in the same pan until lightly browned.

  4. Season the meat with chopped mushrooms, eschalot, parsley, pepper, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the beefsteak at the bottom of a baking dish, then add the halved pigeons on top.

  2. Rinse the frying pan with stock or water and strain it into the dish.

  3. Add the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Cover the dish with puff paste and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

House pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful during the long, covered baking.
Beefsteak
Adds meaty richness and savoury depth to the filling as it browns and cooks slowly.
Butter
Browns the meats in the pan, building colour and rich flavour at the start.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the filling, giving it a creamy, mellow texture.
Puff paste
Forms a crisp, golden crust that seals and covers the filling.

The step that matters

Browning the meat before baking. Searing the beefsteak and pigeons in butter builds deep browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the filling pale and less savoury.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, pepper, egg):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, pepper, egg. 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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