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Potted Pigeons

Potted pigeons are pigeons cooked in a brown gravy with butter, flour, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Potted Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Stuff the pigeons.

  2. Season the pigeons with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Roll the pigeons in flour.

  4. Brown the pigeons in salt pork fat.

Make the gravy

  1. In a separate pan, brown 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of flour.

  3. Brown the flour.

  4. Pour in 1 pint of hot water.

  5. Add ½ teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce.

Cook

  1. Place the pigeons in a stew pan.

  2. Cover the pigeons with brown gravy.

  3. Cover the pigeons.

  4. Cook until tender.

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. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Main protein; cooking slowly until tender breaks down the meat's connective tissue.
Flour
Coats the birds and browns, helping form a richer, thickened gravy.
Butter
Fat that is browned with flour to build the roux base for the gravy.
Salt pork fat
Fat that browns the floured pigeons, adding savory flavor and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Brown the flour in butter. Cooking the flour in fat until it turns golden removes raw starchy taste and builds a nutty color and depth. Stopping too early leaves the gravy pale and floury.

“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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