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Pigeons Roasted

Roasted pigeons seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pigeons Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the parsley and mix it with the cold butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the pigeons.

  3. Skewer the pigeons on a lark spit through the side.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast for about 15 minutes, basting frequently with butter.

  2. Sprinkle with flour before removing from the fire.

  3. Serve with additional parsley and butter on the dish.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts during roasting to baste the birds, adding moisture, richness and browning.
Parsley
Adds fresh herbal aroma to the stuffing and the finished dish.

The step that matters

Basting frequently with butter. Pigeon meat is lean, so regular basting keeps the surface from drying out while the fat helps the skin brown evenly.

“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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