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Pigeon Pie

Pigeons should be braised immediately after purchase to ensure freshness.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Do not place beef steak at the bottom of the pie; it absorbs the juices from the pigeons.

  2. Place butter, thyme, pepper, and salt inside each pigeon.

  3. Boil the gizzards first, then wrap each pigeon in a vine leaf and top with a slice of bacon.

  4. If available, add a little salmi of game or pigeons; otherwise, add water and hard-boiled egg yolks.

  5. Add farce-balls and a clove of garlic if desired.

  6. Stick some of the pigeons' feet in the middle of the crust.

  7. Use puff pastry for a nice pie, but any other pastry will suffice.

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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, thyme, pepper, egg, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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