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Guinea-fowls

A dish of pigeons cooked with butter, parsley, green onions, salt, pepper, and bread-crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Guinea-fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and prepare the pigeons by splitting their backs and flattening them slightly.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the parsley, green onions, salt, and pepper to the butter.

Cook and broil

  1. Add the pigeons to the saucepan and cook until half done.

  2. Remove the pigeons, roll them in bread-crumbs, and place them on a grill. Broil the pigeons over moderate heat, turning occasionally until fully cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve with maitre d'hotel, piquante, or poivrade 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 is cooked until fully done on the grill.
Butter
Carries the herbs and seasoning and adds richness to the birds during the first cooking.
Bread-crumbs
Form a crisp coating on the pigeons that browns while they broil.

The step that matters

Broiling the pigeons to full doneness. Pigeon pieces are cooked partway in the butter first, so the grilling must finish them fully while turning them often. Turning promotes even browning and heat penetration, and the birds must reach a safe, fully cooked internal temperature.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, pepper, bread. 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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