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Jugged Pigeons

Pigeons are boiled in a jug with butter, wine, ketchup, lemon, anchovy, herbs, and thickened gravy, then garnished with parsley and red cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Jugged Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Season the pigeons with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the pigeons in a jug and add the butter on top.

  3. Cover the jug with a cloth to prevent steam from escaping.

Cook in a water bath

  1. Set the jug in a kettle of boiling water and boil for 1.5 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the pigeons and pour the gravy from the jug into a pan.

  2. Add wine, ketchup, lemon slice, chopped anchovy, and sweet herbs to the gravy.

  3. Boil the mixture, then thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  4. Place the pigeons in a dish and strain the gravy over them.

  5. Garnish with parsley and red cabbage.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 meat, which cooks gently in its own juices and butter inside the sealed jug.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour it thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when rolled in butter and boiled, giving it body.
Anchovy
Adds savory depth to the gravy, giving a salty, umami background flavor.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy, balancing its richness.

The step that matters

Covering the jug and keeping it in gentle boiling water. The cloth keeps steam inside so the pigeons braise in their own juices and butter rather than drying out. Covering the jug and keeping the water at a steady boil for the full 1.5 hours gives tender meat and a concentrated gravy.

“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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