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Potted Pigeons

Potted pigeons are pigeons stewed in water with seasoned cracker crumbs and crisped salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 125 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the seasoning

  1. In a bowl, mix the cracker crumbs with marjoram, summer savory, salt, pepper, celery salt, and clove.

  2. Stir in the melted butter until the mixture is even and dry.

Layer and stew

  1. Fry the salt pork in a kettle until crisp, then remove and leave a thin layer of fat.

  2. Layer the pigeons in the kettle, sprinkling with seasoned cracker crumbs between layers.

  3. Add strips of the crisped pork throughout the layers.

  4. Cover the pigeons with warm water and cover the kettle.

  5. Bring to a slow boil and stew gently for three hours, adjusting seasoning as needed.

Serve

  1. Serve the pigeons in a deep dish with gravy poured over them, and the remaining gravy in a sauce tureen.

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. Marjoram + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Summer savory + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Marjoram + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together615 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb juices and thicken the gravy while coating the layers with seasoning.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the kettle as it renders and crisps.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumb seasoning spread evenly.

The step that matters

Stew gently after a slow boil. A vigorous boil toughens meat proteins and can break the layers apart. Gentle, steady heat over three hours lets the connective tissue break down so the pigeons turn tender.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, marjoram, summer savory, pepper, clove, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, marjoram, summer savory, pepper, clove, butter. 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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