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Roast Pigeons

Roasted pigeons wrapped in bacon and vine leaves, basted with veal broth and butter, served with a mustard‑tarragon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Kill the pigeons by breaking their necks without bleeding them.

  2. Pluck, draw, singe, and truss the pigeons.

  3. Cover the pigeons with bacon slices and vine leaves, tying them with coarse thread.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pigeons on a spit, basting with veal broth and butter.

  2. Cook for about 30 minutes if they are young and tender.

  3. Remove the thread.

  4. Serve hot.

  5. Accompany with Sauce Piquante made from mustard, salt, tarragon vinegar, and pepper mixed with the gravy.

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. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
The main meat, which cooks through and becomes tender during roasting.
Bacon
Fat that bastes the birds as it renders, keeping the meat moist and adding flavour.
Veal broth
Moistens the birds while roasting and forms the gravy base for the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the skin brown during basting.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and pungency to the piquante sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Cook for about 30 minutes if they are young and tender.. Pigeon meat is lean and dries out quickly if overcooked, so timing matters. Older birds are tougher and need a different approach than young ones.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, tarragon, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, tarragon, vinegar, pepper. 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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