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Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeons, beef steak, hard-boiled eggs, mushroom ketchup, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. 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

  1. Clean and wash the pigeons.

  2. Season them with pepper, salt, and butter rolled in flour.

Assemble

  1. Fill the dish with the pigeons.

  2. Lay hard-boiled eggs into the dish.

  3. Add pieces of beef steak at the bottom of the dish.

  4. Add mushroom ketchup.

  5. Cover with puff pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and cooked through during baking.
Beef steak
Adds savoury meaty flavour and moisture to the filling as it cooks.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the filling and firm up in the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the flour-coated pigeons brown.
Flour
Coats the pigeons and thickens the juices into a light sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Cover with puff pastry. The pastry must seal the dish fully so steam stays inside, keeping the meat moist while the pastry rises and browns in the oven.

“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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