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Potted Pigeons

Potted pigeons are pigeons simmered in stock with bacon, carrot, onion, served on buttered toast with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potted Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Dredge the pigeons with flour, salt, and pepper.

  2. Place them in a stew pan on the bacon slices, breasts up.

  3. Add the diced carrot and onion.

  4. Cover with stock or hot water and let simmer until tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Melt the butter. Stir in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the remaining liquid and vegetables.

  3. Season the gravy to taste with salt and pepper.

  4. Serve each pigeon on a slice of buttered toast.

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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 meat that is braised until tender in the stock.
Flour
Coats the pigeons and thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky savour as it renders beneath the birds.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and, with flour, forms the base for thickening.
Stock or hot water
Provides the moist cooking liquid that tenderises the pigeons and forms the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Pigeon is lean and can turn tough if cooked hard or too briefly. A gentle, covered simmer in liquid breaks down connective tissue slowly, keeping the meat moist and tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, carrot, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, carrot, butter. 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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