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Potted Pigeons

Potted pigeons are pigeons stuffed with egg, crackers, butter, and herbs, then boiled with salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and clean the pigeons.

  2. Stuff them with a mixture of 1 egg, 2 crackers, and 1 tablespoon of butter.

  3. Season the stuffing with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little marjoram, sage, or summer savory.

  4. Flour the pigeons well.

Cook

  1. Place them in a pot with a small piece of salt pork.

  2. Boil until tender, about 2 hours.

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 + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together883 recipes

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

  3. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering.
Egg
Binds the cracker stuffing so it holds together inside the bird.
Crackers
Soak up moisture and give the stuffing body and structure.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, keeping it moist.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and salt to the cooking liquid and meat.

The step that matters

Boil until tender, about 2 hours. Pigeon meat is lean and tough, so it needs a long, gentle boil with moisture to break down connective tissue. Boiling too hard can toughen the meat and dry out the stuffing, so keep the liquid at a steady simmer and check tenderness before serving.

Swap the marjoram

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, pork. 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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