Name: Broiled Pigeons or Squabs
Ingredients: pigeons or squabs; coarse sea salt; black pepper; butter; thin slices of salt pork

Why it works: Squab and pork work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 26 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Broiled Pigeons or Squabs

Ingredients

Directions

Split the pigeons or squabs down the back.
Season well with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and plenty of butter.
Broil the birds like chicken.
Broil thin slices of salt pork.
Place a slice of salt pork over each bird and serve.

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.

Squab + porktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together26 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Squab + buttertop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together48 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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