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Pigeon Pie, or Partridge Pie

A savory pie filled with pigeons or partridges, butter, bread crumbs, steak, eggs, and gravy, topped with crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie, or Partridge 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the birds with pepper and salt.

  3. Stuff each bird with butter, pepper, and bread crumbs.

Assemble the pie

  1. Place sliced rump steak at the bottom of a pie dish, seasoned with pepper and salt, and dredged in flour.

  2. Lay the birds on top of the steak and add the halved hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Pour in the gravy or water.

  4. Cover with pie crust, wetting the rim to seal.

  5. Brush the top with egg yolk and insert the feet of the pigeons into the center hole.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 or partridges
Provide the main meat, which cooks gently inside the sealed pie.
Rump steak
Adds savory beefy flavor and juices that enrich the filling.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the birds moist and carries flavor during baking.
Flour
Coats the steak so it thickens the juices into a light gravy.
Gravy or water
Supplies liquid that turns into steam and keeps the filling moist.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the crust to promote golden browning.

The step that matters

Sealing the crust rim. A tight seal traps steam so the birds and steak cook in their own juices and stay moist. A leaky seal lets juices escape, which can dry out the filling and leave the meat underdone in places.

“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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