We have some pigeons who decided to make a nest on our window sill. I found them too late – when I knocked on the window to get the hen to move on, I realized she’d already laid her eggs.

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From The Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse, 1747.

To make a Pigeon Pie.

Make a puff-paste crust, cover your dish, let your pigeons be very nicely picked and cleaned, season them with pepper and salt, and put a good piece of fine fresh butter, with pepper and salt, in their bellies: lay them in your pan; the necks gizzards, livers, pinions, and hearts, lay between with the yolk of a hard egg and a beef-steak in the middle; put as much water as will almost fill the dish, lay on the top crust, and bake it well. This is the best way to make a pigeon-pie; but the French fill the pigeons with a very high force-meat, and lay force-meat balls round the inside, with asparagus tops, artichoke bottoms, mushrooms, truffles, and morels, and season high; but that is according to different palates.