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Potted Pigeons

A stew of pigeons cooked in salt pork, onion, pepper, salt, and stock, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potted Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer the salt pork in the bottom of a pot.

  2. Fry the chopped onion in the pork fat until browned.

  3. Place the pigeons in the pot, season with pepper and salt, and dust with flour.

Stew

  1. Add enough hot water or brown stock to cover the pigeons and stew gently for 1 hour, adding more liquid if it boils away.

  2. Dip the split crackers in cold water and cover the pigeons with them.

  3. Stew for an additional 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish, pouring the gravy over the pigeons.

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Salt pork
Renders fat and savory flavor into the pot, and its drippings brown the onion and birds.
Onion
Browned in pork fat, it adds sweetness and depth to the gravy.
Flour
Dusted over the pigeons, it thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Hot water or brown stock
Provides the moisture that gently stews the pigeons until tender.
Crackers
Soaked in cold water and laid on top, they absorb and thicken the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, rounder mouthfeel in the gravy.

The step that matters

Keeping enough liquid while stewing. Stewing gently with the pigeons fully covered keeps the meat moist and tender. If the liquid boils away too fast, the meat can toughen and the gravy becomes too thick and concentrated, so liquid should be topped up as the recipe directs.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, flour, 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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