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Pigeons in Jelly

Pigeons in Jelly is a dish of pigeons baked with bacon, lemon peel, and celery, served in a jelly made from egg whites and shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pigeons in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Season the pigeons with pepper, salt, and chopped celery.

  3. Place the pigeons in a baking dish with bacon and lemon peel.

  4. Bake until done, then cover to preserve color.

Make the jelly

  1. Once the jelly is cold, remove all fat.

  2. Beat in the egg whites and shells, then boil for a moment.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cloth in a sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve the pigeons in the center of a platter, breaking the jelly over them.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 firms and turns tender as it bakes.
Egg whites
Coagulate when heated and bind cloudy particles so the jelly clarifies.
Egg shells
Add calcium and rough surface that help trap sediment during clarifying.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the pigeons as they bake.
Peppercorns
Contribute sharp, aromatic pepper flavor to the dish.

The step that matters

Boil the egg white mixture briefly. As the whites set, they trap cloudy particles and rise with them, leaving the jelly clear when strained. Boiling only a moment matters, because vigorous boiling breaks up this raft and leaves the jelly cloudy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, egg. 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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