Skip to main content
Main

To Pot Pigeons

A method of preserving pigeon quarters by seasoning, baking with butter, then potting in small containers with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pot Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Season the pigeon quarters with mace, allspice, pepper, and coarse sea salt. Rub the seasoning into every part of the pigeons.

  2. Pack the pigeons tightly in a pan.

Bake

  1. Place 1½ cups of butter on top of the pigeons.

  2. Cover the pan with coarse brown paper and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 2 hours.

Pot and seal

  1. Once cooled, remove the butter and place the pigeons into small potting pots tightly.

  2. Clarify the reserved butter and pour it over the pigeons.

  3. When cooled, cover the pots with leather to keep out air.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the meat that is slowly cooked and preserved in fat.
Butter
Bathes the meat as it cooks and later seals the pots by excluding air.

The step that matters

Covering the pan with brown paper during the bake. The paper cover traps moisture and gentle heat around the pigeons so they cook slowly and stay tender rather than drying out in the fat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

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