Name: A Pigeon Pye
Ingredients: 6 pigeons; pepper; salt; 6 tablespoons butter; ½ cup diced ham; 4-5 hard-boiled egg yolks; crumbs for topping; gravy for serving

Why it works: Butter and ham match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 5,475 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: walnut

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Dress the pigeons and tuck their legs under their wings.
Season with pepper and salt, placing a lump of butter in each pigeon, about the size of a walnut.

Assemble

Lay the diced ham at the bottom of a dish.
Place the pigeons on top of the ham and add the hard-boiled egg yolks.
Cover with crumbs and prepare gravy to serve after baking.

Bake and serve

Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Butter + hamtop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Ham + eggtop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together4,516 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + eggtop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together118,511 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pepper + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together85,512 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + hamtop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together6,058 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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 moist during the long, covered bake.
Butter: Adds moisture and richness, keeping the birds juicy as they cook.
Diced ham: Adds salty, savoury flavour to the base beneath the birds.
Hard-boiled egg yolks: Add richness and a creamy texture to the filling.

“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.