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To Pot Pigeons

Pigeons baked in butter, seasoned with pepper, cayenne, mace, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Pot Pigeons

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.

Season and bake

  1. Season the pigeons with pepper, cayenne, mace, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Pack them closely in a pan and cover with butter.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

Cool and serve

  1. Let them cool, then remove the fat.

  2. Place the pigeons in pots and pour melted butter 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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
The main meat, which becomes tender and juicy as it cooks in its own fat and butter.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, carrying flavour through the meat as it bakes and as it is poured over at the end.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Pigeon meat must be fully cooked before serving. Undercooked meat can be unsafe and tough, so check that the meat is firm and no longer pink near the bone before removing it from the oven.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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