Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Pigeon Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Chop the suet finely.
Make a light paste with the flour and suet.
Assemble
Butter a basin or mold deep enough to hold the pigeon and line it with the paste.
Season the pigeon with pepper and salt, then place it in the lined basin.
Cover the pigeon with the remaining paste.
Cook
Steam gently for 1.5 hours.
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.
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Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 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
- Flour
- Forms the paste that wraps and encloses the pigeon as it cooks.
- Suet
- Adds fat to the paste, keeping it rich and tender as it steams.
- Pigeon
- Provides the main meat, which cooks gently within the steamed paste.
The step that matters
Steam gently for 1.5 hours. Steaming at a gentle heat cooks the pigeon through while keeping the suet paste moist and tender. Boiling vigorously can toughen the meat and break up the paste enclosing it.
“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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