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Smoked Squab Pigeon with Beetroot and Chervil

The sweetness of beetroot is a perfect bedfellow for the squab pigeon, which in this recipe is smoked over spruce bark.

By bbcfood · From Open Recipes · 38 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 125 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4
Prep1 hr
Cook2 hr

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Beetroot + cherviltop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Thyme + rosemarytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Shallot + cherviltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Garlic + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together23,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Rosemary + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,489 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (squab, thyme, garlic, rosemary, olive, butter, shallot):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Orangebetter flavor fit
  3. Limebetter flavor fit
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against squab, thyme, garlic, rosemary, olive, butter, shallot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).