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Entree of Pigeons with Truffles

A dish of pigeons stuffed with seasoned forcemeat, larded, roasted, glazed, and served with lamb sweetbreads and truffle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and lamb work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 134 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Entree of Pigeons with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Bone the pigeons.

  2. Stuff the pigeons with seasoned forcemeat.

  3. Blanch the pigeons.

  4. Lard the pigeons.

  5. Cover the larding with paper.

Roast and glaze

  1. Roast the pigeons.

  2. Glaze the larding.

Plate and serve

  1. Place the pigeons in the center of a dish.

  2. Surround the pigeons with the larded, braised, and glazed lamb sweetbreads.

  3. Serve with truffle sauce underneath.

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. Truffle + lambtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Sauce + lambtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together925 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  3. Truffle + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes

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 is firm and rich, and are protected by the lard during roasting.
Forcemeat
Adds seasoned moisture and body inside the birds as they cook.
Larding
Bacon or fat that bastes the lean meat, adding moisture and savory flavor while it roasts.
Truffle sauce
Adds earthy aroma and rich flavor that complements the meats.
Lamb sweetbreads
Tender, delicate meat that absorbs the glaze and provides contrast in texture.

The step that matters

Roast the pigeons. Lean birds dry out quickly, so the larding must keep covering the meat with paper while roasting. Heat that is too high or too long toughens the meat and dries the forcemeat.

“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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