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Potted Pigeons

A preserved pigeon dish seasoned with nutmeg, cloves, white pepper, sea salt, bay leaves, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the pigeons for a week in cold weather.

  2. Draw the intestines and remove the feathers.

  3. Cut off the necks and wings, then open them at the backbones.

  4. Wash the pigeons in salt water and dry them quickly.

Season and cure

  1. Season the pigeons inside and out with nutmeg, cloves, white pepper, sea salt, and bay leaves.

  2. Place them in a jar, cover, and let them sit for a week, turning daily.

Bake and pot

  1. Put a lump of fresh butter inside each pigeon and tie thick paper over the pots.

  2. Bake slowly until done.

  3. While warm, pour off any gravy and set it aside to cool.

  4. Once cold, remove the butter from the gravy and clarify it.

  5. Cover the pigeons with clarified butter to a thickness of at least ½ inch in each pot.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + white peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together752 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 becomes tender and rich when cooked slowly in its own fat.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, and the clarified layer seals the meat from air.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, sweet aroma that flavours the meat.
Cloves
Adds strong, pungent aroma to the seasoning.
White pepper
Adds sharp, mild heat that balances the rich meat.
Ground bay leaves
Adds herbal aroma to the seasoning.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until done. Low, slow heat cooks the pigeons gently in their fat, so the meat becomes tender rather than dry and tough. Overcooking at high heat would toughen the muscle and leave the potted meat dry.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, clove, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, 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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