Why it works: Meat and liver work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 332 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
French Pie of Pigeons a L'aspic
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Rest the pastry dough under a damp cloth for 10 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Rub the inside of a French pie mold with melted clean lard.
Roll out the pastry into an oval shape to line the mold, ensuring it's ¼ inch thick.
Press the pastry into the mold, making sure it rises ½ inch above the rim.
Line the inside of the mold with slices of firm fat bacon.
Prepare the pigeons by cutting off the pinions and feet.
Chop the pigeon livers and mix them with the sausage meat.
Cut each pigeon in half and fill each half with a portion of sausage meat, forming balls.
Embed the balls in the remaining sausage meat and fill the mold.
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.
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Meat + livertop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together332 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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