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An Excellent Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeons, foie gras, plovers' eggs, forcemeat, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

An Excellent 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

  1. Prepare the pigeons by trimming off all excess parts, including pinions and below the thighs.

  2. Season the pigeons with pepper and salt.

Fill the pie

  1. Stuff the pigeons with foie gras and quartered truffles.

  2. Fill the pie with plovers' eggs.

  3. Add some good forcemeat.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy from the leftover parts of the birds and calf's head stock.

  2. Add Madeira, lemon juice, and cayenne to the gravy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Ensure your pie crust is light and flaky.

  2. Bake the pie in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 3 hours.

  3. Pour in more gravy just before removing from the oven.

  4. Allow the pie to cool.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 browns and firms as it cooks.
Foie gras
Melts into the meat, adding richness and a silky moistness.
Forcemeat
Binds the filling and keeps the meat moist as it cooks.
Calf's head stock
Its gelatin gives the gravy body and helps it set when cooled.
Madeira
Adds sweetness, depth, and a nutty aroma to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the gravy and fat.

The step that matters

Pour in more gravy just before removing from the oven. Adding gravy late keeps it liquid and fills the spaces that cooking shrinks away. Gelatin from the stock then sets as the pie cools, giving the slices a moist, firm texture.

“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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