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Pigeon Pie

A baked dish of pigeons stuffed with bread or potatoes, covered in pastry and sweet butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Clean and truss the pigeons, rubbing the outside and inside with a mixture of pepper and salt.

  2. Rub the inside with butter, fill with stuffing or mashed potatoes, then sew up the slit.

Assemble the pie

  1. Grease a pudding dish and line the sides with pie paste rolled to ¼ inch thickness.

  2. Place the pigeons in the dish, cut the sweet butter into pieces and place over them.

  3. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and parsley if using, then dredge with flour.

  4. Add water to nearly fill the pie, lay skewers across the top, and cover with puff pastry.

  5. Cut a slit in the middle of the crust and decorate the edges with pastry leaves or braids.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

  2. When nearly done, brush the top with a mixture of beaten egg yolk and milk.

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

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

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Bread + wheattop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 cooks inside the pie and becomes tender under the crust.
Stuffing or mashed potatoes
Fill the birds, adding moisture and soaking up flavour from the meat as they cook.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the meat stay moist and the sauce taste rounded.
Wheat flour
Dredged over the pigeons to thicken the juices into a gravy-like sauce.
Pie paste
Forms the structural crust that holds the filling and bakes into a crisp shell.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the top to promote golden browning of the crust.

The step that matters

Brushing the top with egg yolk and milk. Brushing when nearly done lets the glaze brown evenly without scorching. Egg proteins and milk sugars darken quickly at high heat, so timing matters.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, bread, wheat, flour, egg, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

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