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Roast Pigeons

Roast pigeons served with a sauce of simmered livers, lemon rind, broth, butter, parsley, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Pluck and dress the pigeons, reserving the livers without washing them.

  2. Tie a slice of larding pork over the breasts and roast for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Chop the livers and simmer them with the grated lemon rind, broth or water, butter, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Once the livers are cooked, add the lemon juice and serve the sauce in a sauceboat.

Serve

  1. Garnish the pigeons with watercresses.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 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 is roasted whole and served with the sauce.
Larding pork
Tied over the breasts, it bastes the lean birds and keeps them moist as they roast.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the liver sauce, giving it a smoother, rounder texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver sauce and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Roasting the pigeons. Pigeon meat is lean and dries out quickly, so the larding pork must cover the breasts to protect them. Removing the birds before the meat stiffens keeps it tender and juicy.

“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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