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Pigeons Roasted

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Celery and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pigeons Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the pigeons by cleaning them thoroughly.

  2. Make the stuffing by mixing veal, fat of bacon, bread crumbs soaked in milk, and seasoning.

  3. Stuff the pigeons with the veal mixture.

  4. Roast the pigeons until cooked through.

  5. Serve with currant jelly, stewed apples, dressed celery, salad, and mashed turnips or squash.

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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, milk, apple, celery, turnip):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, milk, apple, celery, turnip. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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