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Pigeon Cutlets

Pigeon cutlets served with potato paste, mushroom sauce, and stock reduction.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Pigeon Cutlets

ten cutlets per portion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shape the pigeon cutlets and place ten in each portion.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and refrigerate until needed.

Cook the cutlets

  1. Sauté the cutlets over a hot plate until light brown.

  2. Dish the cutlets on a border of prepared potato paste.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Simmer the pigeon carcasses in a stewpan with ½ pint of second stock for one hour.

  2. Reduce the essence to a glaze and add to the mushroom sauce.

  3. Divide the mushrooms and sauce between the cutlets and pour around the fillets before serving.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Potato + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeon cutlets
Provide the main meat, which browns on the outside while staying tender inside.
Butter
Carries heat evenly and adds fat that helps the cutlets brown and taste rich.
Second stock
Adds moisture and savoury depth, and when reduced it becomes the concentrated glaze for the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce that is served with the cutlets.

The step that matters

Sautéing the cutlets until light brown. High heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavour. Pigeon meat is lean and dries out quickly, so stopping at light brown keeps the cutlets tender.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, sauce. 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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