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Pigeons and Partridges

Roasted pigeons or partridges covered with bacon, dredged in flour, and basted with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pigeons and Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil or roast the pigeons or partridges like chickens.

  2. Cover the breasts with thin slices of bacon.

  3. When nearly done, remove the bacon.

  4. Dredge with flour and baste with butter.

  5. Cook for about 30 minutes.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Pigeons or partridges
Provide the lean meat that is the main component of the dish.
Thin slices of bacon
Cover the breasts to add fat and moisture while the birds cook.
Butter
Basting adds fat that helps browning and gives the skin a richer flavour.
Flour
Dredging coats the surface, helping it brown and form a crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Removing the bacon when nearly done. Leaving the bacon on too long can burn it and stop the breast skin from browning. Removing it near the end lets the surface brown while the meat stays moist.

“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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