Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Pigeons

Pigeons roasted with butter, salt, and pepper, served on toast with drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Pigeons

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Clean the pigeons and split them down the back.

  2. Place them in a cold area for a few hours.

  3. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Roast

  1. Place the pigeons in a pan with the skin side down.

  2. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and small pieces of butter.

  3. Bake until browned, then turn them over.

  4. Rub with butter, add a dash of pepper and salt, and brown the other side.

  5. Cover and cook until fully done.

Serve

  1. Serve on toast and pour the drippings from the pan over 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.

  1. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 browns and cooks through in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and carries flavour across the skin.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the skin and helps draw out moisture for better browning.

The step that matters

Turning the pigeons and browning the second side. Skin-side-down browning sets the surface first. Turning too early or too late can leave the skin pale or the meat unevenly cooked, so watch colour rather than time alone.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes