Why it works: Egg and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Pigeon Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Prepare the steak as for beef steak pie.
Lay the steak at the bottom of a pie dish.
Cut the pigeons into quarters.
Sprinkle the pigeons with salt and pepper.
Assemble the pie
Lay the pigeons over the steak.
Cut the hard boiled eggs into 8 pieces each.
Pile the egg pieces on top.
Half fill the dish with stock.
Cover and decorate with pastry.
Bake and finish
Bake for about 1 hour.
Scald and cleanse the feet of the pigeons.
Stick the feet into the pastry after the pie has baked for about 30 minutes.
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.
-
Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 main meat, which becomes tender and rich during the long bake.
- Steak
- Adds more meat and body, softening as it cooks in the pie.
- Hard boiled eggs
- Add richness and a firm, creamy texture between the meat and the crust.
- Good stock
- Provides moisture and savoury flavour that gathers into a sauce as the pie bakes.
- Best flaky pastry
- Forms the crisp, layered crust that seals and browns over the filling.
The step that matters
Stick the feet into the pastry after about 30 minutes. Adding the feet only once the pastry has partly set helps them stay upright. Added earlier, the soft dough can sink or slump and lose its shape as it bakes.
“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
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.