Name: Pigeon or Lark Pie
Ingredients: 6 large pigeons; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; 1 pound rump steak, cut into pieces; Yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs; ½ cup broth or water; Puff pastry (or seasoned pie paste); 1 egg yolk for washing; Pastry leaves for decoration

Why it works: Pepper and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pigeon or Lark Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Truss the pigeons as for stewing and season with salt and pepper.
Place the rump steak pieces at the bottom of a pie dish.
Layer the trussed pigeons on top of the steak, followed by the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.
Add the broth or water and cover with another layer of steak.

Assemble and bake

Wet the edge of the dish and cover with puff pastry.
Wash the top with egg yolk and decorate with pastry leaves and pigeon feet.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

Serve

Before serving, make a small opening in the top and pour in hot gravy.

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 + eggtop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 during the long, moist cooking.
Rump steak: Adds meaty flavor and gravy-producing juices as it cooks beneath the birds.
Hard-boiled egg yolks: Enrich the filling with a rich, creamy texture and savory flavor.
Puff pastry: Forms a crisp, golden crust that browns in the oven and encloses the filling.
Broth or water: Supplies moisture that keeps the filling juicy and helps form the gravy.

“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.