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Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with puff pastry, veal cutlet, pigeons, boiled egg yolks, butter, and spices, baked with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a fine puff pastry and lay a border around a large disk.

  2. Cover the bottom with a veal cutlet or tender rump steak, seasoned with salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  3. Prepare enough freshly killed young pigeons for one layer in the dish.

Assemble

  1. Place a slice of butter seasoned with cayenne and mace inside each pigeon, laying them breast down in the dish.

  2. Add the yolks of boiled eggs between and over the pigeons, and stick plenty of butter on top.

  3. Season the whole with salt and spices, then pour in cold water or veal broth for gravy.

Bake

  1. Roll out the pastry cover to ¾ inch thick, secure it around the edge, ornament it, and bake the pie for an hour or more.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,988 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that encloses the filling.
Veal cutlet or tender rump steak
Adds meaty body and savoury flavour to the base of the pie.
Fresh young pigeons
Provide the main meat, which cooks tender in the enclosed oven heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, basting the meat as it bakes.
Boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture to the filling.
Veal broth or cold water
Forms the gravy that keeps the filling moist during baking.

The step that matters

Pastry cover thickness and sealing. The lid must be thick enough to hold up during the long bake and sealed firmly at the edge so steam and juices stay inside, keeping the meat moist and the gravy from leaking out.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

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