Name: To Roast Pigeons
Ingredients: young pigeons; butter; cayenne pepper; brown gravy; watercress

Why it works: Pepper and watercress work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the heads, necks, and toes from the pigeons.
Draw the pigeons carefully and rinse them with plenty of water.
Dry the pigeons and place a small piece of butter dipped in cayenne inside each bird.
Truss the wings over the backs of the pigeons.
Roast the pigeons at a brisk fire, basting them constantly with butter.
Serve with brown gravy and a side of parsley and butter.
For the second course, serve on a bed of young watercress.

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.

Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + watercresstop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together842 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).