Name: Broiled Pigeons or Squabs
Ingredients: 2 pigeons or squabs; salt; pepper; 4 tablespoons butter; 2 slices salt pork

Why it works: Squab and pork work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 26 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Broiled Pigeons or Squabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Split the pigeons or squabs down the back.
Season well with salt, pepper, and butter.

Broil and serve

Broil the birds as you would chicken.
Broil the salt pork slices until thin and crispy.
Place a slice of salt pork over each bird and serve.

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.

Squab + porktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together26 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Squab + buttertop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together48 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons or squabs: Provide the meat that is cooked whole, split open to cook evenly under the broiler.
Butter: Adds moisture and richness, helping the birds brown and stay tender under heat.
Salt pork: Adds savory fat that crisps and bastes the birds as it renders.

“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.