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To Roast Pigeons

Roasted pigeons stuffed with veal or liver, seasoned with parsley, served with butter, fried bread crumbs, or gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Fill each pigeon with veal stuffing or finely chopped liver and parsley, seasoned.

  2. Roast pigeons for about 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with parsley and butter, or fried bread crumbs, or gravy.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  5. Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,766 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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, cooking through in the oven to become tender.
Veal stuffing or liver
Adds savory, rich flavor and moisture inside the bird as it roasts.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the skin brown.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Sagefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, bread. 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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