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Pigeon a LA Crapaudine

Pigeon à la Crapaudine is a French pigeon dish cooked with butter, shallots, broth, and served with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pigeon a LA Crapaudine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Prepare the pigeons by cutting them as shown in the reference image.

  2. Flatten each half with a meat mallet.

  3. Season each half with salt and black pepper.

Brown and press

  1. Heat butter in a skillet.

  2. Brown the pigeons on both sides for 15 minutes.

  3. Press the pigeons between two boards with a weight of about 2.2 pounds.

Make the sauce

  1. Add chopped shallots to the skillet.

  2. Sauté the shallots for 2 minutes.

  3. Pour in the broth and add black pepper.

  4. Reduce the liquid to about ⅓ cup.

  5. Strain the sauce into a small saucepan and degrease it.

Coat and serve

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Coat the pigeon pieces in the melted butter.

  3. Dredge the pieces in breadcrumbs.

  4. Grill them on low heat for 5 minutes on each side.

  5. Heat the reserved sauce.

  6. Pour the sauce over the pigeons on a serving dish.

  7. Serve with a lemon on the side.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Main protein; browning in butter gives them color and a rich, savory flavor.
Shallots
Mild aromatic base that adds sweetness and depth to the reduced sauce.
Butter
Fat for browning the birds and enriching the coating and flavor.
Broth or stock
Liquid that is reduced to concentrate flavor into the sauce.
Breadcrumbs
Coating that helps form a crisp, browned surface during grilling.

The step that matters

Brown the pigeons on both sides for 15 minutes. Browning develops flavor through the Maillard reaction, which needs a dry surface and steady heat. Crowding the skillet or steaming the birds instead of browning them leaves the flavor flat.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, lemon. 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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