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To Roast Pigeons

A dish of pigeons stuffed with parsley, bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and nutmeg, then roasted and served with parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw and pick the pigeons immediately after they are killed, wash the inside thoroughly, and wipe dry.

  2. Stuff the pigeons with a mixture of parsley, bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Dredge the stuffed pigeons with flour.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast them over a good fire, basting with butter.

  2. Roast for about 25 to 30 minutes until done.

  3. Serve the pigeons on a dish in a row with parsley sauce.

  4. If asparagus is in season, use it for stuffing and sauce; boil it first, chop the green heads for stuffing, and cut them in half for melted butter.

  5. Have cranberry sauce on the table.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + asparagustop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 is roasted whole after being stuffed.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and seasoning in the stuffing, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and is brushed on during roasting to aid browning.
Flour
Dredging coat that helps the outside of the bird brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Roast for about 25 to 30 minutes until done. Pigeon meat is lean and dries out quickly, so basting with butter and stopping at doneness keeps it moist. Overcooking toughens the meat, while undercooking leaves it unsafe to eat.

Swap the asparagus

The recipe marks asparagus as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, bread, butter, pepper, nutmeg, flour, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, bread, butter, pepper, nutmeg, flour, sauce. 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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