Name: Pigeon Pie
Ingredients: 4 pigeons; coarse sea salt; black pepper; butter; parsley; 2 hard-boiled eggs; 1 beefsteak; 1 cup water; ham (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

Rub the pigeons inside and out with salt and pepper.
Place a bit of butter and chopped parsley with the livers inside each pigeon.

Assemble the pie

Lay a beefsteak at the bottom of the dish.
Place the pigeons on top of the beefsteak, adding a hard-boiled egg between each pair.
Add a cup of water to the dish and place a bit of ham on each pigeon if desired.
Season the gizzards and two wing joints, placing them in the center of the pie.
Make a hole in the crust and place three cleaned feet to identify the pie.
Cover with puff pastry, brush with egg, and bake for one hour.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 cooks tender within the pastry and steak.
Beefsteak: Lies beneath the birds, adding meaty flavor and moisture to the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and a firm, sliced texture between the pigeons.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor into the birds as they cook.
Puff pastry (in the method): Forms a flaky, golden crust that seals the filling while baking.

“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.