Skip to main content
Main

Pigeons Roasted

Roasted pigeons served with watercress, giblet gravy, and cranberries or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,933 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Pigeons Roasted

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Clean and stuff the pigeons like you would for roast chickens.

  2. Rub the pigeons with butter and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

Roast

  1. Lay the pigeons on slices of salt pork in a roasting pan and add a little hot water.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes, basting frequently and turning to brown evenly.

Serve

  1. Serve on a bed of watercress with giblet gravy and cranberries or currant jelly.

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 + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

  2. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Pork + watercresstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Butter + watercresstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together842 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Watercress + curranttop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 cooks through and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavour on the skin.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pan, moistening the birds and adding savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Basting and turning during the bake. Basting spreads fat and pan juices over the birds, while turning them exposes every side to heat. Together these help the skin brown evenly and keep the meat from drying out during the short roast.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pork, watercress):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pork, watercress. 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes