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Broiled Pigeons and Mushrooms

Broiled pigeons seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon, served with broiled mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Pigeons and Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the pigeons open down the back and dry them well.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then rub with fat.

Cook and serve

  1. Place on a grill over a very clear fire and cook until done.

  2. Squeeze the juice of a lemon over the pigeons.

  3. Broil the mushrooms and lay them underneath the pigeons before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 direct heat when split flat.
Fat
Coats the skin so it browns evenly and does not dry out on the grill.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the pigeon.
Mushrooms
Soften and brown under the birds, adding savoury, earthy flavour and moisture.

The step that matters

Cook over a very clear fire until done. Pigeon is small and lean, so it can dry out quickly. A very clear, hot fire with no smoke or flare-ups browns the skin without scorching it, and the bird must be checked for doneness rather than left for a set time.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mushroom. 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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