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Pigeons Roasted

A dish of pigeons roasted with a parsley, butter, pepper, and sea salt stuffing, basted with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Pigeons Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the parsley, squeeze it, and chop it finely.

  2. Mix the chopped parsley with the cold butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Stuff each pigeon with the mixture and skewer them.

Roast

  1. Place the pigeons on a roasting spit and tie them securely.

  2. Roast over the fire, basting frequently with butter and flour.

  3. Season with salt just before removing from the heat.

Serve

  1. Serve with parsley and butter on the dish, placing the pigeons on top.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and the basting butter helps the birds brown and stay juicy.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the stuffing and the finished dish.
Flour
Mixed into the basting fat, it helps the drippings brown and thicken slightly on the bird.

The step that matters

Basting frequently over the fire. Pigeon is lean and dries out quickly over direct heat. Regular basting with butter keeps the meat moist and helps the skin brown evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour. 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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