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Entree of Pigeons with Truffles

Pigeon dish stuffed with forcemeat, larded, roasted, glazed, served with lamb sweetbreads and truffle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and lamb work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 134 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Entree of Pigeons with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Bone the pigeons and stuff them with well-seasoned forcemeat.

  2. Blanch and lard the pigeons, then cover the larding with paper.

Cook and serve

  1. Roast the pigeons until cooked through.

  2. Glaze the larding before serving.

  3. Lard, braise, and glaze the lamb sweetbreads, then arrange them around the pigeons.

  4. Place the pigeons in the center of a dish.

  5. Serve with truffle sauce underneath.

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. Truffle + lambtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Sauce + lambtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together925 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  3. Truffle + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes

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 through in the roasting step.
Forcemeat
Adds moisture and a seasoned, tender filling inside the boned pigeons.
Lard
Basts the lean meat with fat so it stays moist while roasting.
Lamb sweetbreads
Provide a rich, tender meat that is larded, braised and glazed for browning.
Truffle sauce
Adds earthy aroma and richness to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Roast the pigeons until cooked through. Pigeon is lean and can dry out quickly, while undercooking leaves it unsafe. Larding with fat and covering it with paper helps protect the meat during roasting.

“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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