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Roast Pigeons

Roasted pigeons seasoned with bacon, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the pigeons in shape, drawing the skin over the back.

  2. Place thin slices of bacon over the breasts and add a small piece of butter inside each pigeon.

Roast and serve

  1. Skewer the pigeons and roast them over a brisk fire until thoroughly cooked, basting with butter.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and pepper before serving.

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

Young pigeons
Provide the main meat, which cooks through over high heat.
Thin slices of bacon
Lay over the breasts to baste the lean meat with fat as it roasts.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the skin brown when basted over the fire.

The step that matters

Roast until thoroughly cooked. Pigeon meat is dark and can be eaten pink, but the record calls for thorough cooking. Basting with butter keeps the surface moist and helps it brown, while the fire must be brisk enough to cook the birds through without drying the outside.

“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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