Skip to main content
Main

Pigeon Pie, in a Dish

A savory pie made with pigeons, beef, mushrooms, and puff pastry, baked and served with stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie, in a Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pie

  1. Draw in the legs of the pigeons and season with pepper, salt, shallots, mushrooms, and parsley.

  2. Lay beef steaks at the bottom of a dish and add a little stock between each layer to prevent sticking.

  3. Place the seasoned pigeons on top of the beef steaks.

  4. Add the hard-boiled egg yolks and cover the pie with puff pastry.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 1 hour, then add about ½ pint of good stock and coulis mixed before serving.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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 and rich during the long baking.
Beef steaks
Add savoury meat flavour and body to the base layer of the pie.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that seals the pie and browns in the oven.
Stock
Adds moisture and savoury depth, and keeps the steaks from sticking.

The step that matters

Layering the steaks with stock. Stock between the steak layers keeps the meat from sticking to the dish and helps it stay moist as it cooks.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mushroom, parsley, beef, egg):

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mushroom, parsley, beef, egg. 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.

More pigeon pie recipes

Filling 3 See all 224 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes