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To Pot Pigeons

A method of cooking pigeons by baking them with butter and then storing them in pots with the baked butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Pot Pigeons

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. Season the cleaned pigeons with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Pack them closely in a small deep pan.

Bake

  1. Cover the pigeons with butter and then with thick paper tied down.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked.

Pot and store

  1. Once cold, place the pigeons in pots, pouring the baked butter over them.

  2. Ensure the butter is thick over the pigeons if they are to be stored.

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

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

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 and rich through slow baking in butter.
Butter
Keeps the pigeons moist during baking and forms a thick seal for storage.

The step that matters

Sealing the pigeons in butter for storage. Butter that is thick over the pigeons excludes air and limits spoilage. Thin or uneven butter leaves meat exposed, so it can go off sooner.

“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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