Skip to main content
Main

Potted Pigeons, or Partridges

A preserved dish of pigeons or partridges baked in butter and spices, then stored in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Pigeons, or Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Clean, truss, and stuff the birds properly.

  2. Sprinkle them with coarse sea salt, allspice, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Place the birds in a jar and cover them with sweet butter.

Bake and pot

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Remove from the oven and let cool.

  3. Cut the birds into serving pieces and pack them tightly into a jar.

  4. Fill the jar with clarified butter and cover with a piece of moist bladder.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,325 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pigeons or partridges
Provide the meat that becomes tender during the long, slow baking.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the birds as they bake.
Clarified butter
Seals the birds in the jar, keeping them moist and protected from air.
Powdered allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the meat.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle heat that seasons the meat.

The step that matters

Packing the birds into the jar. Butter must fully cover the meat and the jar must be packed tightly, because any exposed surface can spoil or dry out. Pieces cut after cooling keep their shape and sit closely together.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes