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Pigeons Rôtis

Roasted pigeons wrapped in bacon and optional vine leaf, basted with butter and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pigeons Rôtis

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.

Prepare

  1. Remove the gills from the pigeons and stuff the legs inside the body.

  2. Wrap the pigeons in bacon and a vine leaf if in season.

Roast

  1. Baste with a mixture of butter and vinegar.

  2. Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
The main meat, which forms the centrepiece of the dish when roasted.
Bacon
Adds fat that bastes the birds and seasons the meat as it renders.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the skin brown and the meat stay moist.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter and bacon fat.

The step that matters

Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes. A hot oven browns the bacon and skin quickly while the meat is still tender. Small birds dry out fast, so leaving them in longer can toughen the breast meat.

“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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