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Roast Pigeons

Roast pigeons are spit‑roasted with a pepper‑salt rub, coated in batter, and served with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the pigeons and stuff them like chickens, leaving the feet on.

  2. Dip the pigeons in scalding water to remove the skin.

  3. Tie the pigeons together below the breastbone.

  4. Rub the outside of each bird with a mixture of pepper and salt.

Roast

  1. Place the pigeons on a spit with water in the dripping pan.

  2. For each bird, add a piece of batter the size of a small egg.

  3. Roast the pigeons before a hot fire for about 30 minutes, basting frequently.

  4. When nearly done, dredge the pigeons with flour and baste them with the batter in the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Make a thin batter with 1 teaspoon of flour and cold water.

  2. Stir the thin batter into the hot gravy.

  3. Continue stirring the gravy until it thickens.

  4. Strain the gravy into a tureen and serve with the pigeons.

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + wheattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together984 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which is roasted whole over a hot fire until cooked through.
Wheat flour
Dusted on the birds and stirred into the gravy, where its starch thickens the liquid and helps brown the surface.

The step that matters

Stirring the thin batter into the hot gravy. Flour starch thickens only when heated, and it clumps if added without stirring. Continuous stirring spreads the starch evenly so the gravy thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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