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Roasted Pigeons

Roasted pigeons stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, onion, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roasted Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick, draw, and wash the pigeons.

  2. Dry them on a clean napkin.

  3. Rub the pigeons inside and outside with pepper and salt.

  4. Fill them with a mixture of bread crumbs, pepper, salt, butter, and minced onion.

  5. Skewer or tie the pigeons with tape.

Roast and baste

  1. Place them on a spit and baste frequently with butter.

  2. Roast for about 20 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 cooks through while the filling heats.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and juices in the filling, keeping the stuffing moist.
Butter
Adds fat that bastes the birds, promoting moisture and browning on the skin.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the stuffing as it softens during roasting.

The step that matters

Basting with butter during roasting. Frequent basting spreads melted fat over the skin, which helps it brown evenly and keeps the lean meat from drying out in the oven.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, 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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