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To Broil Pigeons Whole

Whole pigeons are cleaned, stuffed with forcemeat, broiled, and served with butter and gravy.

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

To Broil Pigeons Whole

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the pigeons and cut off the wings and neck, leaving enough skin at the neck to tie.

  2. Make a forcemeat with bread crumbs, livers, anchovy, parsley, butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, binding it with the beaten egg yolk.

  3. Stuff each pigeon with a piece of forcemeat the size of a large walnut and tie the neck and rump.

  4. Rub the pigeons with butter and dust with a mixture of pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the pigeons over a slow fire until they are a nice brown color, basting with butter using a brush.

  2. Serve with melted butter and parsley or a thickened brown gravy.

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

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Liver + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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 gentle heat and browns on the outside.
Livers
Add richness and a deep, savory flavor to the forcemeat stuffing.
Bread crumbs (in the method)
Give the forcemeat body so it holds together inside the bird.
Egg yolk
Binds the forcemeat so it holds its shape when stuffed and cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, and helps the skin brown when basted.
Anchovy
Adds a salty, savory depth to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Broiling over a slow fire. Gentle, steady heat cooks the birds through without scorching the skin before the stuffing is hot. Frequent basting with butter keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, liver, anchovy, parsley, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, liver, anchovy, parsley, 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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