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Pigeons Roasted

Roasted pigeons stuffed with parsley, butter, pepper, and sea salt, served with additional parsley and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pigeons Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald and chop the parsley.

  2. Mix the chopped parsley with cold butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Stuff and skewer

  1. Stuff the mixture into the pigeons.

  2. Skewer the pigeons through the side, not the middle.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pigeons on a spit for about 15 minutes, basting frequently with butter.

  2. Before removing from the fire, sprinkle with flour.

  3. Serve with additional parsley and butter on the dish.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. 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

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which cooks through over the spit while staying moist.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, and basting helps the surface brown and stay juicy.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma that complements the rich butter and meat.
Flour (in the method)
Dusted on at the end, it helps form a light, browned crust on the surface.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the flour before removing from the fire. Flour browns quickly over direct heat. Added too early it can scorch and taste bitter, and added too late it will not form a light, even crust.

“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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