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Roast Pigeons

Roast pigeons stuffed with liver, bread crumbs, butter, onion, parsley, and nutmeg, topped with bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 the pigeons

  1. Clean and truss the pigeons.

  2. Mince the livers and mix with bread crumbs, butter, onion, parsley, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Fill the pigeons with the mixture and fasten a slice of bacon over each breast.

Roast and make the sauce

  1. Roast the pigeons until cooked through.

  2. Mix a little water with the gravy from the birds and boil with a thickening.

  3. Season the sauce with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

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

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and liver juices to form a moist, tender stuffing.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the stuffing moist and flavourful during roasting.
Bacon slices
Baste the breast as it renders fat, keeping the lean meat moist and adding savoury flavour.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Roast the pigeons until cooked through. Pigeon breast is lean and dries out quickly, while the stuffing needs enough heat to cook fully. Checking that the birds are cooked through without overroasting keeps the meat juicy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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