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Hot Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeons, vegetables, and puff pastry, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Hot Pigeon Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Bone the pigeons and brown them in butter.

  2. In the same pan, add sliced onions, carrots, celery, salt, and pepper.

  3. Remove the pigeons and stir in flour until smooth.

  4. Gradually add hot water, then return the pigeons to the pan.

  5. Cook slowly until tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and cover with puff pastry.

  2. Cut slits in the pastry for steam to escape.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 through slow cooking in the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy that binds the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden top crust that browns in the hot oven.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the pigeons and carries flavor through the dish.
Sliced onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the pan.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until tender. Gentle simmering breaks down the connective tissue in pigeon meat. Boiling hard can toughen the muscle fibers and leave the meat chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, celery, pepper, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, celery, pepper, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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