Skip to main content
Main

Pigeons in Jelly

Pigeons are cooked in a seasoned broth, then set in a clarified jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pigeons in Jelly

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.

Make the broth

  1. Boil the knuckle of veal or calf's foot with mace, herbs, pepper, lemon peel, and bacon to make broth.

Cook the pigeons

  1. Place the pigeons in a baking pan and pour the broth over them.

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

  3. Remove the pigeons and season them, then cover to preserve color.

Set in aspic

  1. Clear the jelly by boiling it with egg whites, then strain through a cloth and sieve.

  2. Fill a bowl with half the jelly, place the pigeons upside‑down in it, and pour the remaining jelly over them until it covers the feet by three inches.

  3. Refrigerate for 24 hours before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + myrtletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + myrtletop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Provide the main meat, which is cooked gently in the broth and then set in the jelly.
Knuckle of veal or calf's foot
Its collagen gives the broth the gelatin that lets the jelly set firm.
Egg whites (in the method)
Collect impurities as they boil, clearing the jelly so it looks transparent.

The step that matters

Clearing the jelly with egg whites. Egg whites coagulate and trap cloudy particles as the jelly boils. Straining through a cloth afterward removes them, so the aspic stays clear rather than murky.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, lemon, myrtle):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, lemon, myrtle. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes