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Baked Pigeons, or Pigeons a LA Crapaudine

A baked pigeon stuffed with a mixture of bacon, herbs, bread crumbs, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Baked Pigeons, or Pigeons a LA Crapaudine

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Split the pigeons down the back and remove the livers.

  3. Mince the livers with bacon and sweet herbs, adding more bacon or sausage meat if desired.

  4. Mix in soaked bread crumbs, egg yolks, salt, pepper, mace, and nutmeg.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the pigeons with the mixture and glaze them with beaten egg white.

  2. Place the pigeons in a buttered pan and bake for 30 minutes.

  3. Before serving, squeeze lemon juice into the gravy.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the meat that is the main body of the dish.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stuffing, keeping it moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they absorb moisture and keep the stuffing tender.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when baked.
Egg white
Beaten and brushed on, it forms a glaze that browns and sets on the surface.

The step that matters

Glazing with beaten egg white. Egg white sets and browns in the oven, forming a glossy, golden surface. Brushing it on evenly before baking helps the skin color uniformly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, butter. 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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