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Jugged Pigeons

Pigeons cooked in a jug with butter, wine, ketchup, lemon, anchovy, and herbs, served with thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Jugged Pigeons

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and draw the pigeons, wash them clean, and dry with a cloth.

  2. Season the pigeons with mace, pepper, and salt.

Cook

  1. Place the pigeons in a jug and cover with butter.

  2. Seal the jug tightly with a cloth to prevent steam from escaping.

  3. Boil the jug in a kettle of water for 1.5 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the pigeons and pour the gravy into a saucepan.

  2. Add white wine, ketchup, lemon slice, chopped anchovy, and sweet herbs to the gravy.

  3. Boil briefly and thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  4. Serve the pigeons on a dish and strain the gravy over them.

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. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the meat, which becomes tender during long gentle cooking in the sealed jug.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and thickens the gravy when rolled in flour.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness, tang and savoury depth to the gravy.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the gravy, though it is not identified by taste in the record.

The step that matters

Seal the jug tightly. A tight seal traps steam so the pigeons cook in their own moisture and stay tender rather than drying out during the long boil.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, white wine, ketchup, lemon, anchovy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, white wine, ketchup, lemon, anchovy. 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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