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Preserve

Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeons, turkey dressing, and gravy, topped with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Stuff each pigeon with turkey dressing.

  2. Loosen the joints with a knife without separating them.

  3. Place pigeons in a stewpan and cover with water.

Make the gravy

  1. Cook until nearly tender, then season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour, then remove and cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish and line the sides with pie crust.

  2. Layer sliced hard-boiled eggs, pigeons, and gravy in the dish until full.

  3. Cover with a crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

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

  3. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 main meat, which becomes tender through slow cooking in water.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy that binds the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy and helps the crust brown.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the filling as a layer between the pigeons and gravy.
Rich pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns to a golden finish in the oven.

The step that matters

Cool the gravy before filling the dish. Flour must be fully cooked into the gravy to thicken it smoothly. Cooling it before assembly keeps the filling from making the pie crust soggy.

“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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