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Roast Pigeons

Roast pigeons seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, and parsley, served with bread sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the pigeons dry.

  2. Truss the pigeons and season the inside with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Place a piece of butter in each pigeon.

Roast and serve

  1. Prepare a hot fire and roast the pigeons, basting continuously for about 30 minutes.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve with bread sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which cooks through and browns in the hot fire.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the meat from drying out as it roasts.

The step that matters

Basting continuously while roasting. Frequent basting spreads melted fat and juices over the surface, keeping the skin moist and promoting even browning. Skipping it risks dry meat and uneven colour during the roughly 30 minutes in the hot fire.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, parsley, bread, sauce. 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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