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Roasted Pigeons

Roasted pigeons seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, stuffed with celery and bacon, baked and basted with butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roasted Pigeons

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Clean, stuff, and truss the pigeons.

  2. Place them on a rack in a dripping pan.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then dredge with flour.

  4. Put a short stalk of celery on each breast and cover with a thin slice of fat bacon.

Roast

  1. Place in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. When well browned, reduce heat and baste every ten minutes.

  3. Use ¼ cup melted butter mixed with ½ cup boiling water for basting.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Flour + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Celery + chestnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which cooks through and browns in the hot oven.
Flour
Dredging coats the skin, helping it brown and crisp during roasting.
Fat bacon
Lays over the breast to baste the meat with melting fat and add savoury flavour.
Butter
Mixed with boiling water for basting, adding fat and richness to the browning skin.

The step that matters

Reduce heat after browning. Once the birds are well browned, lowering the oven heat lets the meat cook through without scorching the skin. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and evenly coloured.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, chestnut, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, chestnut, milk. 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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