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To Roast Pigeons

Roasted pigeons seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter, cooked slowly in a dripping pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove feathers and clean pigeons inside.

  2. Soak pigeons in water for 30 minutes to remove blood.

Boil

  1. Boil pigeons with a little coarse sea salt for 30 minutes, skimming off the scum.

Roast

  1. Remove pigeons, flour them well, and place in a dripping pan.

  2. Strain the boiling water and add some to the pan with a piece of butter.

  3. Baste the pigeons often and add pepper.

  4. Roast for nearly 2 hours.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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 becomes tender through boiling and then roasting.
Flour
Coats the birds so the skin browns and crisps in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan liquid and helps the skin brown.

The step that matters

Basting the pigeons often. Spooning the pan liquid over the birds keeps the surface moist and helps the flour coating brown evenly instead of drying or scorching during the long roast.

“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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