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Jugged Pigeons

Pigeons cooked in a jug with butter, wine, ketchup, anchovy, herbs, and a thickened gravy, garnished with parsley and red cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 the pigeons

  1. Pluck, draw, wash, and dry the pigeons with a cloth.

  2. Season the pigeons with beaten mace, white pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Place the pigeons in a jug with the butter.

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

Cook and make the gravy

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

  2. Remove the pigeons and collect the gravy in a pan.

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

  4. Boil the mixture briefly and thicken with butter rolled in flour.

Serve

  1. Place the pigeons in a dish and strain the gravy over them.

  2. Garnish with parsley and red cabbage.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 gently in the sealed jug until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and enriches the gravy when rolled in flour to thicken it.
Anchovy
Adds a savoury depth to the gravy without tasting distinctly fishy.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Seal the jug. If the cloth seal leaks, steam escapes and the liquid reduces, so the pigeons can dry out. A tight seal keeps the moisture in and the meat tender during the long gentle boil.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mace, wine, ketchup, lemon, anchovy, flour. 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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