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Boiled Pigeons and Bacon

A dish of boiled pigeons served with browned bacon, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Pigeons and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pigeons clean and tuck their legs under their wings.

  2. Remove the skin from the bacon and brown it.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the pigeons in a mixture of milk and water for 20 minutes.

  2. Place the bacon in the center of a serving dish and arrange the pigeons around it.

  3. Pour melted butter over the pigeons and serve with parsley and additional butter on the side.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Milk + parsleytop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,011 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 through gentle simmering in the liquid.
Milk
Adds richness and mild sweetness to the cooking liquid, softening the flavour of the meat.
Bacon
Adds savoury, salty flavour and browning from the surface fat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the pigeons a smooth, flavourful finish.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Macefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter. 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.

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