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To Roast Pigeons

Roasted pigeons stuffed with parsley, liver, butter, pepper, salt, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Scald the parsley and chop it with the livers.

  2. Mix the parsley and livers with the butter, and season with pepper and salt.

Roast and serve

  1. Stuff each pigeon with the mixture and cover the breast with a slice of bacon.

  2. Roast the pigeons until cooked through.

  3. Serve with additional parsley and butter in 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. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + livertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Livers from the pigeons
Adds rich, savoury body to the stuffing and moistens it as it cooks.
Fresh butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the stuffing moist.
Slices of bacon
Covers the breast, adding fat that bastes the meat and encourages browning.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Sagefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, pepper. 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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