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Potted Pigeons

Potted pigeons are pigeons cooked slowly in water with seasoned cracker crumbs, salt pork, and spices.

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. Fry the salt pork in a kettle until crisp.

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

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

  4. Remove the pork from the kettle, leaving a thin layer of fat.

Layer and simmer

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

  2. Add strips of crisped pork throughout the layers.

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

  4. Bring to a slow boil and simmer gently for 3 hours, adjusting seasoning as needed.

Serve

  1. Serve the pigeons in a deep dish with gravy poured over them.

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 simmering in liquid.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb fat and juices and thicken the gravy as the dish cooks.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the kettle and the crisped pieces layered through the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and coats the crumbs so the seasoning spreads evenly.

The step that matters

Simmer gently at a slow boil. A hard, rapid boil toughens meat proteins and can break up the pigeons. A slow simmer lets connective tissue soften gradually while the meat stays moist and intact.

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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