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Roast Pigeons

Roast pigeons stuffed with bread, herbs, and salt pork, then baked and served with a wine and stock gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,075 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the crumbled bread, marjoram, pepper, salt, ground cloves, chopped onion, chopped salt pork, and eggs until well combined.

  3. Stuff the pigeons with the mixture, sew them up, and truss them tightly.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Roast the pigeons for 30 minutes, basting with butter and pinning a strip of salt pork to the breast.

  2. For the gravy, combine the drippings, meat stock, butter, and flour in a saucepan.

  3. Add the red wine and ground cloves, then bring to a boil.

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. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
The main protein, which the stuffing flavours and the roasting cooks through.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so the bread and aromatics hold together when cooked.
Stale bread
Absorbs moisture and gives the stuffing body and a light texture.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes browning and adds richness to the skin.
Flour
Thickens the gravy by binding with the fat and liquids.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Trussing and stuffing the pigeons tightly. Packing the stuffing firmly and trussing the birds keeps their shape and helps the cavity cook evenly, while the breast stays moist under the salt pork strip.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, marjoram, pepper, clove, pork, egg, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, marjoram, pepper, clove, pork, egg, 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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