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Mock Pigeons

Veal fillets rolled with breadcrumbs, ham, herbs, baked in gravy, thickened with browned flour, served with ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mock Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rolls

  1. Remove the bones from the veal fillets and flatten them with a hatchet.

  2. Spread each fillet with a forcemeat made of breadcrumbs, ham, and herbs.

  3. Season the fillets with pepper and salt.

  4. Roll the meat up and bind into oblong rolls with soft string.

Bake

  1. Place the rolls in a deep dish and pour 2 cups of gravy or stock over them.

  2. Cover with another dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for nearly 2 hours.

  3. Baste the rolls well with the gravy during baking.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Once done, place the rolls on a hot dish.

  2. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  3. Season the gravy with pepper, salt, and ketchup.

  4. Boil the gravy.

  5. Pour part of the gravy over the pigeons.

  6. Serve the rest of the gravy in a tureen.

  7. Cut the string from the rolls.

  8. Remove the string before serving, taking care not to spoil the shape of the pigeons.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal fillet
Forms the main meat that is rolled, holds the stuffing, and becomes tender during slow baking.
Bread crumbs
Bind the forcemeat and absorb juices, keeping the stuffing moist inside the roll.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the forcemeat.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, deeper colour and flavour.
Gravy or stock
Keeps the rolls moist while baking and forms the base of the serving sauce.

The step that matters

Baking the rolls covered with gravy. Veal is lean and dries out easily, so basting and keeping the rolls covered in liquid over the long bake helps them stay moist and tender.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, ham, pepper, ketchup, parsley, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, ham, pepper, ketchup, parsley, 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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