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To Boil Pigeons

A boiled pigeon dish served with a creamy rice mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Boil Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the pigeons thoroughly and remove the craw.

  2. Cut off the legs at the first joint and tuck them under the skin.

  3. In a bowl, mix parsley, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and butter to stuff the pigeons.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the pigeons slowly in mutton broth for 15 minutes.

  2. In a separate pot, boil rice in milk until tender.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with cream and nutmeg, then stir into the thickened rice with butter and flour.

  4. Place the pigeons in a dish, pour the rice mixture over them, and serve.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Form the main body of the dish, cooked gently in broth until tender.
Rice
Cooked in milk until tender, then thickened to form the sauce base.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the rice mixture as it sets with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the stuffing and the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the egg and rice mixture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the rice. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the rice is too hot or the mixture boils. Adding them off the heat or stirring constantly keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, butter, mutton, rice, milk, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, butter, mutton, rice, milk, 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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