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Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeons, beef or veal, ham, liver, eggs, butter, and pastry, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dish

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line the sides of a dish with pastry.

  3. Place a beef steak or veal cutlet at the bottom and dredge with flour.

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Clean the pigeons thoroughly.

  2. Pound the ham with the livers, pepper, salt, and mace in a mortar.

  3. Roll the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs in the mixture.

  4. Stuff one yolk and a small lump of butter into each pigeon.

Assemble and cover

  1. Place the pigeons breast down in the dish.

  2. Fill the dish nearly with water or broth.

  3. Cover with pastry and stick the feet of the pigeons in the middle.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Flour and butter 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

Pigeon
The main meat, which becomes tender as it cooks slowly in the pie's liquid and steam.
Flour
Dusted on the steak, it helps thicken the juices and lightly bind the base of the pie.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the filling when pounded with the livers.
Hard-boiled eggs
Their yolks enrich the filling, giving it a softer, creamier texture.
Butter
Melts inside each bird, adding richness and moisture to the meat.

The step that matters

Fill the dish nearly with water or broth. The liquid gently braises the pigeons and forms the gravy under the crust. Too little liquid lets the meat dry out and the sauce turn thin or scorched.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, ham, liver, pepper, egg, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, ham, liver, pepper, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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