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Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeons, eggs, parsley, pepper, salt, flour, butter, broth, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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

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 pigeons

  1. Clean and split the pigeons.

  2. Simmer the pigeons in a saucepan until tender.

  3. Remove some larger bones from the pigeons.

Assemble the pie

  1. Butter a baking dish.

  2. Layer the pigeons, sliced eggs, parsley, pepper, and salt in the dish.

  3. Make a dressing by mixing the broth with flour and butter, and season it.

  4. Pour the dressing over the pie.

  5. Cover with pastry, leaving a hole in the center.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

  2. Add the remaining gravy and 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering.
Eggs
Add body and richness to the filling when sliced and layered inside the pie.
Flour
Thickens the broth and butter into a dressing that gives the filling a smooth, saucy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing and helps it taste rounded and savoury.
Pastry
Forms the covering that seals in the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour. The pastry needs enough oven heat to set and brown while the filling heats through. The hole in the center lets steam escape so the crust does not turn soggy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, flour, butter. 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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