Skip to main content
Main

Jugged Pigeons

Pigeons stewed in a jug with butter, mace, pepper, wine, ketchup, anchovy, herbs, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Jugged Pigeons

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Wash and dry the pigeons with a cloth.

  2. Season the pigeons with beaten mace, white pepper, and salt.

  3. Place the pigeons in a jug and add the butter.

  4. Seal the jug tightly with a cloth to prevent steam from escaping.

Cook in a water bath

  1. Set the jug in a kettle of boiling water and boil for 1.5 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the pigeons and pour the gravy into a pan.

  2. Add wine, ketchup, lemon slice, chopped anchovy, and sweet herbs to the gravy.

  3. Boil the mixture briefly, then thicken it with butter rolled in flour.

  4. Place the pigeons in a serving dish and strain the gravy over them.

  5. Garnish with parsley and red cabbage.

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. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 main meat, which turns tender during the long, gentle steaming in the sealed jug.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and is later used with flour to thicken the gravy.
Anchovy
Adds a deep savoury note to the gravy that rounds out the flavour.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang to the gravy.

The step that matters

Sealing the jug tightly. A tight seal keeps steam inside the jug, so the pigeons cook gently in their own juices and the gravy stays concentrated rather than watering down or drying out.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mace, wine, ketchup, lemon, anchovy, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mace, wine, ketchup, lemon, anchovy, flour. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes