Name: Pigeon Pie
Ingredients: Pigeons; maitre d'hotel butter; livers; steak or veal

Why it works: Liver and veal match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Pigeons
maitre d'hotel butter
livers
steak or veal

Directions

Clean the pigeons and cut them in halves.
Mix maitre d'hotel butter with the parboiled and minced livers.
Place a piece of the butter mixture inside each pigeon half.
Cut the steak or veal into neat pieces and season 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.

Liver + vealtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together392 recipes

Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).
Butter + livertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,065 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + vealtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,381 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).