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Pigeon Pie, or Partridge Pie

A savory pie filled with pigeons or partridges, sliced rump steak, hard‑boiled eggs, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie, or Partridge 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 birds

  1. Rub the birds with pepper and salt.

  2. Mix butter with pepper and breadcrumbs, and place inside each bird.

Assemble the pie

  1. In a pie dish, layer the sliced rump steak, seasoned with pepper, salt, and dredged with flour.

  2. Place the birds on top of the steak, and add the halved hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Pour in the gravy or water.

  4. Cover with pie crust, wetting the rim to ensure it sticks.

  5. Brush the top with egg yolk and insert the feet of the pigeons into the center hole.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 to 1¼ hours.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 or partridges
Provide the main meat and rich flavour of the filling.
Rump steak
Adds beefy flavour and chewy, tender meat to the filling.
Flour
Dredged over the steak to thicken the gravy or water as the pie bakes.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, rich texture to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the breadcrumb stuffing inside the birds.
Breadcrumbs
Soak up butter and juices, keeping the stuffing moist.

“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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