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Jugged Pigeons

A stuffed pigeon boiled in a tin pail, served with a butter‑flour thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Jugged Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Stuff the pigeons with a mixture of giblets, minced pork, powdered egg yolks, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and beaten egg.

  2. Tie the legs and wings close to the bodies.

  3. Pack the pigeons in a tin pail with a tight lid.

Cook

  1. Submerge the pail in a pot of boiling water, placing a weight on top to keep it steady.

  2. Cook for 2.5 hours, ensuring the water does not boil over the top.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Drain the gravy into a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Season the gravy.

  4. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  5. Pour the gravy over the pigeons.

  6. Cover the pail.

  7. Let it sit in the hot water for 10 minutes 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Form the main body of the dish, cooked tender by gentle steaming in the pail.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the stuffing, helping it hold together and stay soft.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing, with the powdered yolks and beaten raw egg setting as it cooks.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and, with flour, gives it body and a smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when rolled with butter and stirred into the drippings.
Fat pork
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keep the water from boiling over the pail. Vigorous boiling can splash water into the sealed pail and dilute the pigeons and gravy. A gentle simmer cooks the birds evenly over the long steaming time.

“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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