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Potted Pigeons or Birds

A pot pie made with pigeons or other birds, seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, marjoram, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Pigeons or Birds

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pick and soak the birds, then boil them carefully.

  2. Prepare a pie crust as you would for chicken pie.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the whole birds in the crust, season with pepper, salt, bits of butter, and sweet marjoram.

  2. Thickly flour the birds.

  3. Strain the boiling water and fill the vessel two-thirds full with it.

  4. Cover with the crust and cut a hole in the center.

  5. Bake for 1.5 hours at 350°F (175°C).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Birds
Provide the main body of the pie, with meat that cooks tender in the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and keeps the filling moist.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and helps bind the filling into a sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the birds carefully. Boiling gently keeps the meat tender and the stock clear. A hard boil toughens muscle proteins and can break the birds apart before baking.

Swap the marjoram

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Marjoramthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, 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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