Skip to main content
Main

Pigeon Pie

A savory pie of stewed pigeons, mushrooms, herbs, and egg yolks encased in puff pastry.

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

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. 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 the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and sauté the parsley, lemon thyme, and mushrooms.

  2. Season the insides of the pigeons with salt and pepper.

  3. Add the seasoned pigeons to the pan.

  4. Stew the pigeons for a few minutes, turning them until they begin to fry.

  5. Pour enough consommé to cover the pigeons and let them stew until fully cooked.

  6. Remove the pigeons from the heat and let them cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out part of the puff pastry and line the edge of a pie dish.

  2. Place the pigeons in the dish with the hard-boiled egg yolks.

  3. Pour half of the cooking liquid over the pigeons.

  4. Season with a little more salt and pepper.

  5. Cover with more pastry, trimming the edges neatly.

  6. Decorate the top with a star shape and make a small hole in the center.

  7. Lightly egg-wash the top and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden brown.

Finish and serve

  1. In the remaining cooking liquid, add a little butter and heat it up.

  2. Pour the warmed buttered liquid over the pie before serving.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 flavorful as they stew in consommé.
Mushrooms
Add earthy depth and moisture to the filling as they soften in butter.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that rises and browns in the oven.
Consommé
Cooks the pigeons gently and provides savory liquid that becomes the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and richness in the sauce and sautéed aromatics.

The step that matters

Cooling the pigeons before assembling. Letting the cooked pigeons cool before they go under pastry keeps the pastry from becoming soggy and stops the filling from steaming the crust from inside.

“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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes