Skip to main content
Main

Pigeon Pie

A savory pie of pigeon halves, beefsteak, mushrooms, eschalot, parsley, eggs, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Prepare the pigeons by cutting them in halves.

  2. Cut the beefsteak into convenient pieces.

  3. Lightly fry the steak in a little butter in a clean stewpan.

  4. Fry the pigeon halves until cooked.

  5. Season with chopped mushrooms, eschalot, parsley, pepper, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the steak at the bottom of a baking dish.

  2. Layer the pigeon halves on top of the steak.

  3. Rinse the stewpan with ½ pint of stock or water and strain it into the dish.

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

  5. Cover the dish with puff paste.

  6. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes at 350°F (175°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. 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 rich during frying and baking.
Beefsteak
Adds savoury, meaty depth and body to the filling as it cooks in the dish.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Thicken the filling slightly and add richness as they blend into the cooking liquid.
Puff paste
Forms a flaky, golden crust that seals and browns over the filling.

The step that matters

Fry the pigeon halves until cooked. Pigeon is dark, lean meat that dries out easily. Cooking it fully before baking sets its texture, while the stock added later keeps the filling moist under the crust.

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.

More pigeon pie recipes

Filling 3 See all 224 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes