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Pigeon Pie

Pigeon pie is a baked dish of pigeons, gravy, and pie crust with sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pigeon 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 the pigeons

  1. Stuff each pigeon with turkey-style dressing.

  2. Loosen the joints with a knife without separating them.

  3. Place pigeons in a stew-pan and cover with water.

  4. Cook until nearly tender.

  5. Season the pigeons with salt, pepper, and butter.

  6. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  7. Remove the gravy from heat and cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish.

  2. Line the sides of the dish with pie crust.

  3. Layer sliced hard-boiled eggs, pigeons, and gravy in the dish until full.

  4. Cover with pie crust.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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 cooking in water.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it holds together around the pigeons instead of running out.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the pigeons and dish brown lightly in the oven.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, sliced texture that contrasts with the tender meat.
Rich pie crust
Forms the lining and lid that enclose the filling and brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooling the gravy before assembling. Hot gravy would soften the raw pie crust and make it soggy or greasy before baking, so it should be cooled first.

“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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