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Boiled Pigeons and Bacon

A stew of boiled pigeons in milk and water, served with browned bacon, stewed spinach, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,025 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Boiled Pigeons and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Wash the pigeons thoroughly.

  2. Turn their legs under their wings.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the pigeons in a mixture of milk and water for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the skin from the bacon and brown it.

  3. Place the bacon in the center of a serving dish.

  4. Arrange the pigeons around the bacon and add lumps of stewed spinach.

  5. Pour plain melted butter over the pigeons.

  6. Serve with parsley and butter in a separate dish.

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. Parsley + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Milk + spinachtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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 becomes tender through gentle simmering in liquid.
Bacon
Adds savory, salty flavor and browned richness to the dish.
Milk
Gives the cooking liquid a mild, creamy flavor and softens the meat.
Plain melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the pigeons when poured over them.

The step that matters

Boil the pigeons in a mixture of milk and water for 20 minutes. Simmering gently rather than boiling hard keeps the meat tender and prevents it from toughening or drying out. Milk in the liquid mellows the flavor and helps keep the meat moist.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, parsley, 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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