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Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeons, beef, stock, port wine, egg yolks, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the birds

  1. Draw, pick, singe, and wash the pigeons.

  2. Cut off the pinions, necks, and feet, and truss them.

  3. Mix butter with flour, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  4. Place a bit of this mixture inside each bird.

  5. Rub the pigeons and giblets with the seasoning.

Assemble the pie

  1. Place slices of beef in the bottom of a dish.

  2. Add the pigeons and giblets.

  3. Sprinkle with more seasoning.

  4. Pour in the stock and port wine.

  5. Add the yolks of hard-boiled eggs.

  6. Cover with puff pastry.

  7. Decorate with the feet.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the meat that forms the body of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying the seasoning into the birds and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter mixture and helps bind the sauce.
Beef
Adds savory meaty flavor to the bottom layer of the pie.
Brown stock
Supplies liquid that becomes the savory sauce during baking.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the filling with fat and a creamy, soft texture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, beef, port wine, 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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