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Preserve

Potted Pigeons

Potted pigeons are pigeons preserved in butter after being seasoned, baked, and clarified.

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 the pigeons

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

  2. Draw the intestines. Remove the feathers. Cut off the necks and pinions. Open them at the backbones.

  3. Wash the pigeons in saltwater. Dry them quickly.

  4. Season the pigeons inside and out with nutmeg, cloves, white pepper, sea salt, and bay leaves. Place the pigeons in a jar. Cover the jar. Let them sit for a week, turning daily.

Bake and seal

  1. Put each pigeon in a pot with a lump of fresh butter inside. Cover the pots with thick paper. Bake slowly until done.

  2. Pour off any gravy. Set the gravy aside to cool. Remove the butter from the gravy. Clarify the gravy.

  3. 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
Provide the meat that is cooked slowly and preserved under a layer of butter.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture inside each pot while the pigeons bake.
Sea salt
Seasons the birds and helps draw out moisture during the curing week.
Ground bay leaves
Adds a subtle herbal aroma to the seasoned birds.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the seasoned birds.
Grated nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the seasoned birds.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until done. Slow, gentle heat tenderizes the pigeon meat and renders fat into the butter without drying the birds. Covering the pots holds in moisture, so the meat stays tender rather than tough.

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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