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Pigeon Pie

A pie made with pigeons, rump steak, pepper, salt, hard‑boiled egg yolks, puff pastry, and cullis sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,303 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pigeons in cold water and dry them.

  2. Cut the rump steak into pieces and season with pepper and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the seasoned steak in a deep dish and add the pigeons and their liver.

  2. Cover with hard-boiled egg yolks and puff pastry.

  3. Bake until golden brown, then add cullis and serve.

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 + saucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

  3. Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Pepper and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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 as the pie cooks.
Rump steak
Adds meaty body and savoury flavour that blends into the pie's juices.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky, golden crust that bakes over the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The pastry needs enough heat to set and brown fully while the meat cooks through. Too little heat leaves the crust pale and soggy, and the filling underdone.

“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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