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Potted Pigeons

Potted pigeons are pigeons stewed with salt pork, onion, pepper, salt, flour, and liquid, topped with soaked crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 fat until browned.

Stew

  1. Place the pigeons in the pot, season with pepper and salt, and sprinkle with flour.

  2. Add enough hot water or brown stock to cover the pigeons.

  3. Stew gently for 1 hour, adding more liquid if it boils away.

  4. Cover the pigeons with the soaked crackers and 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. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Salt pork
Renders fat that fries the onion and adds savory, salty flavor to the stew.
Onion
Browns in the rendered fat to build a sweet, savory base for the gravy.
Flour
Sprinkled over the pigeons to thicken the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Crackers
Soaked and laid over the pigeons, they soften and help thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing gently with enough liquid. A gentle simmer keeps the pigeon meat tender rather than tough, and the pot must not dry out, so liquid is topped up if it boils away.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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