Skip to main content
Main

Jugged Pigeon

A pigeon stuffed with liver, suet, breadcrumbs, herbs, and eggs, stewed in a jar with butter and a savory sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Jugged Pigeon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Truss and season the pigeons with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Stuff them with a mixture of their own livers, shredded beef suet, bread crumbs, parsley, marjoram, and 2 eggs.

  3. Sew them up and place them in a jar with ½ pound of butter.

  4. Seal the jar tightly to prevent steam from escaping.

Stew and finish

  1. Set the jar in a pot of water to stew for 2 hours, ensuring it boils continuously.

  2. Once cooked, remove the pigeons from the gravy and skim off the fat.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of cream, a little lemon peel, 1 shredded anchovy, and a few mushrooms to the gravy.

  4. Thicken the sauce with butter and flour.

  5. Serve the pigeons on a dish, pour the sauce over them, and garnish with sliced lemon.

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. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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 during the long, gentle stew.
Pigeon livers
Add rich, savory flavor to the stuffing and blend with the other filling ingredients.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together around the birds.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing a soft, light body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the jar, enriching the gravy as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and flavorful during cooking.

The step that matters

Seal the jar tightly. A tight seal traps steam inside so the birds cook in their own moisture and gravy. If steam escapes, the contents can dry out and the flavors become concentrated in an uneven way.

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, liver, beef, bread, parsley, egg, butter):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Marjoramthe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, liver, beef, bread, parsley, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes