Skip to main content
Main

Pigeons in Jelly

A dish of pigeons cooked in a savory jelly with herbs, bacon, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: White pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Pigeons in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the pigeons by singeing, washing, and cleaning the heads and feet, leaving the heads on and clipping the nails.

Bake

  1. In a pan, combine broth from boiled veal or calf's foot with mace, sweet herbs, white pepper, lemon peel, and bacon. Bake the pigeons in this mixture.

  2. Once baked, let the pigeons cool in the broth. Season to taste before baking.

Make the jelly

  1. To prepare the jelly, boil it with the whites of two eggs to clarify, then strain through a cloth dipped in boiling water.

  2. Remove all fat from the jelly before using it.

Set and chill

  1. Fill a bowl with half the jelly and place the cooled pigeons upside down in it.

  2. Pour the remaining jelly over the pigeons until it covers them by three inches.

  3. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours 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. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + myrtletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + myrtletop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 as it bakes slowly in the seasoned broth.
Savoury jelly
Sets around the pigeons as a firm, cold glaze that holds the birds together when chilled.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat to the broth as the pigeons bake.

The step that matters

Remove all fat from the jelly before using it.. Fat left on the jelly floats and cools into droplets, which clouds the clear set and leaves a greasy mouthfeel. Skimming it off keeps the jelly clear and firm.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mace, lemon, myrtle):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mace, lemon, myrtle. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes