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To Roast Pigeons

A dish of roasted pigeons seasoned with butter, cayenne pepper, and sea salt, served with brown gravy, parsley, and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 469 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the heads, necks, and toes of the pigeons at the first joint.

  2. Carefully draw the pigeons, avoiding breaking the gallbladders, and rinse them with water.

  3. Dry the pigeons and place a small bit of butter dipped in cayenne inside each bird.

Roast

  1. Truss the wings over the backs and roast the pigeons at a brisk fire.

  2. Baste the pigeons constantly with butter while roasting.

  3. Roast for about 18 to 20 minutes, or 5 minutes longer if they are large.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown gravy and a side of parsley and butter on young watercress.

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. Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 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 cooks quickly over high heat and stays tender when not overcooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and bastes the birds as they roast to promote browning.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle heat and aroma that flavours the meat from the inside as the butter melts.

The step that matters

Roast for about 18 to 20 minutes, or 5 minutes longer if they are large.. Pigeon meat is lean and dense, and overcooking dries it out quickly. Checking early keeps the breast juicy while the skin crisps over a brisk fire.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, watercress. 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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