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Potted Pigeons

Pigeons stewed in stock with salt pork, onion, and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 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 salt and pepper, and dust with flour.

Stew

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

  2. Split the crackers, dip them 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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, gentle stewing.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pot, adding savory flavor and richness to the gravy.
Onion
Browning in pork fat builds sweet, deep savory flavor for the gravy.
Flour
Dusted on the pigeons, it helps thicken the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother mouthfeel in the gravy, if needed.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 1 hour. A gentle simmer breaks down the connective tissue in the pigeon slowly, making it tender. A hard boil toughens the meat and evaporates the liquid, so keep it at a bare simmer and add liquid as needed.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, 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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