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Pigeons, Stuffed and Roasted

Roasted pigeons stuffed with liver forcemeat, bacon, and spices, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pigeons, Stuffed and Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Pluck, draw, and singe the pigeons.

  2. Make the forcemeat by mixing the minced livers, suet, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, mace, parsley, thyme, and beaten egg yolk.

  3. Fill the pigeons with the forcemeat and truss them firmly.

  4. Tie thin slices of bacon over the breasts of the pigeons.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Roast the pigeons over a clear fire for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. For the gravy, mix any drippings from the birds with stock or water.

  3. Add claret, a little forcemeat, and season with salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  4. Thicken the gravy with a beaten egg yolk.

Serve

  1. Serve the pigeons on a hot dish with the sauce poured around them and bread sauce in a tureen.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 cooked whole and stuffed.
Livers
Add rich, savoury flavour to the forcemeat stuffing.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Bind the forcemeat and soak up fat, giving it a soft texture.
Egg yolk
Binds the forcemeat and thickens the gravy as it sets.
Bacon
Lays over the breasts to add fat that bastes the birds as they roast.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with a beaten egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when gently heated but can scramble and curdle if the gravy boils, leaving it grainy. Keep the heat low and stir constantly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, bread, pepper, parsley, thyme, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, bread, pepper, parsley, thyme, egg, nutmeg. 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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