Skip to main content
Main

Pigeon Pie

A savory pie filled with pigeons, butter, and optional forcemeat, anchovy butter, bacon fat, or egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Anchovy and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,330 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the feet, necks, and pinions from the pigeons.

  2. Stew the pigeons until tender and use the cooking liquid in the pie, or rub them with butter and broil slightly before cutting into quarters.

Assemble

  1. Season the pigeons and place them breast down on a layer of rump steak in a pie dish.

  2. Optionally add a forcemeat ball, a piece of anchovy butter, or a slice of bacon fat inside each pigeon, and sprinkle crumbled hard-boiled egg yolks between them.

  3. Line a well-tinned stewpan with pastry.

  4. Place the pigeons inside the pastry-lined pan.

  5. Cover with a lid of crust.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for two hours.

  2. Let it cool in the pan, then warm slightly before turning it out to serve.

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. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. 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
The main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow baking.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the pigeon skin brown when broiled.
Rump steak
Lies beneath the birds, adding meaty flavour and juices to the pie.
Pastry
Forms the case and lid that enclose the filling during baking.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Crumbled yolks add richness and a soft, mealy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Let it cool in the pan before turning out. Cooling lets the juices thicken and the pastry firm up, so the pie holds its shape when turned out. Turning it out too early can cause it to crumble or collapse.

“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.

More pigeon pie recipes

Filling 3 See all 224 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes