Name: Pigeon
Ingredients: 1 young pigeon; 1 ounce of butter; lemon juice; pepper; salt; 1 slice of bacon

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Pigeon

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

Prepare the pigeon for roasting by thoroughly cleaning the inside.
Stuff the pigeon with 1 ounce of butter, a little pepper, salt, and lemon juice.
Truss the pigeon and cover the breast with a slice of bacon.

Roast and serve

Roast the pigeon at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes until fully cooked.
Serve with its own gravy after removing excess fat.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

Young pigeon: The main meat, roasted whole so its flesh cooks through and stays tender.
Butter: Adds fat that enriches the flavor and helps keep the meat moist during roasting.
Bacon: Its fat renders over the breast, basting the lean meat and adding savory flavor.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavor of the fat.

“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.