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Pigeons in Jelly

Pigeons are cooked and set in a clear broth made from veal or calf's foot, mace, herbs, pepper, lemon peel, bacon, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Pigeons in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the knuckle of veal or calf's foot with mace, sweet herbs, whole pepper, lemon peel, and bacon.

  2. Clear the broth by boiling it with egg whites, then strain through a cloth dipped in boiling water.

Cook the pigeons

  1. Place the pigeons in a baking pan with the broth and bake until cooked.

  2. Remove the pigeons and season them.

  3. Cover to preserve color.

Set and serve

  1. Remove any fat from the broth and pour it over the pigeons in a bowl.

  2. Refrigerate for 24 hours until set.

  3. Serve with the jelly around the pigeons.

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

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

  2. Lemon + myrtletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + myrtletop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 main meat, which is cooked gently in the broth so it stays moist.
Egg whites
Trap cloudy particles as they set, clearing the broth so the aspic is transparent.
Knuckle of veal
Releases gelatin into the broth, which is what allows the aspic to set firm.

The step that matters

Clearing the broth with egg whites. Egg whites bind suspended particles as they coagulate, and straining through a cloth removes them. If the broth is stirred hard or boiled roughly, the particles stay in suspension and the aspic looks cloudy rather than clear.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, lemon, myrtle, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, lemon, myrtle, egg. 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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