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A Pigbon

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 293 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the gills from the pigeon.

  2. Carve the pigeon as you would a partridge.

  3. Serve the pigeon on a bed of young delicate watercress.

  4. Mix port wine or claret with mustard and pour into the body of the pigeon if desired.

  5. Remove some stuffing with a spoon.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Watercress + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Port wine + mustardtop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together314 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Watercress + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (watercress, port wine):

  1. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  3. Turnipabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against watercress, port wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

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