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To Boil Pigeons

A dish of boiled pigeons served with melted butter, broccoli, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Broccoli and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 653 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Boil Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the pigeons with coarse sea salt.

Cook

  1. Place them in cold soft water and boil slowly for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Dish the pigeons.

  2. Pour melted butter over them.

  3. Arrange broccoli around the pigeons.

  4. Serve with parsley and butter in a separate dish.

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. Broccoli + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together653 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + broccolitop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
The main protein, cooked gently in water until tender.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat coating to the cooked birds.

The step that matters

Boil slowly. A slow simmer keeps the water from turning violent, which would toughen the meat and break up the pigeons. Gentle heat cooks the birds evenly and keeps them tender and intact.

Swap the broccoli

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Broccolithe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley. 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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