Name: Squab, or Young Wild Pigeon Pie
Ingredients: 2 young squabs (or wild pigeons); ½ cup water; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 1 tablespoon butter; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; 2 tablespoons flour; water (for thickening); biscuit dough or puff pastry for crust

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Squab, or Young Wild Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Skin, draw, and wash the squabs.
Place them in a stew pan with enough water to cover, salt, and lemon juice.
Cook gently until tender, adding water as needed to maintain the level.
Once done, add butter and pepper.
Mix flour with a little water to form a smooth paste, then thicken the mixture.
Let it boil, taste for seasoning, and adjust if necessary.
Transfer to a baking dish and cover with biscuit dough or puff pastry.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together889 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together841 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together697 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Butter and flour 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

Swap the lemon

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

Lemonthe original
Raisinfits about as well
Figfits less well
Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against squab, butter, pepper, flour, biscuit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.