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Roast Pigeon's

Roast Pigeon's is a dish of whole pigeons seasoned with pepper, salt, and butter, roasted over bright fire.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Pigeon's

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the heads and necks from the pigeons.

  2. Truss the wings over the backs.

  3. Cut off the toes at the first joint.

  4. Clean the pigeons thoroughly and wipe them dry.

  5. Season the inside of each pigeon with pepper and salt.

  6. Place 2 tablespoons of butter inside each bird.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the pigeons over a bright fire.

  2. Baste them well while cooking for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Garnish with fried parsley.

  4. Serve with a side of parsley and butter.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 cooks quickly over high heat and stays tender when not overcooked.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and its fat helps the skin brown while basting keeps the meat juicy.

The step that matters

Basting while cooking over the fire. Basting spreads melted butter over the birds, adding moisture and helping the skin brown evenly. Too little basting can leave the meat dry, while the birds need steady attention over the 20 to 30 minutes of cooking.

“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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