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To Roast Pigeons

Roasted pigeons stuffed with parsley, breadcrumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and nutmeg, served with parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

To Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw and clean the pigeons immediately after killing them.

  2. Wash the inside thoroughly and dry it.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the pigeons with a mixture of chopped parsley, breadcrumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Dredge the stuffed pigeons with flour.

  3. Roast them before a good fire, basting with butter, for about 25 to 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with parsley sauce, laying the pigeons in a row on the dish.

  2. If in season, use boiled asparagus for stuffing and sauce.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + asparagustop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Breadcrumbs
Absorb butter and juices, keeping the stuffing moist and tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, and basting helps the skin brown and stay moist.
Flour
Dredging coating helps the outside of the pigeons brown and crisp.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the stuffing and sauce.
Cranberry sauce
Its tartness and sweetness cut through the richness of the roasted meat.

The step that matters

Roasting and basting the pigeons. Pigeon is small and lean, so it dries out quickly over strong heat. Basting with butter adds fat and moisture to the surface and helps the flour coating brown evenly. Watch the time closely, since overcooking toughens the meat.

Swap the asparagus

The recipe marks asparagus as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, pepper, nutmeg, flour, sauce, cranberry):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, pepper, nutmeg, flour, sauce, cranberry. 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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