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Pigeon Soup

A savory soup made with pigeons, ham, vegetables, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pigeon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Mix the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the chopped ham to the mixture.

  3. Place the mixture in the clear soup.

Cook the pigeons and soup

  1. Cut the pigeons into pieces.

  2. Fry the pieces in butter.

  3. Add the fried pigeons to the soup along with thyme, parsley, celery, leek, and bay leaf.

  4. Cook the soup for one hour.

  5. Strain the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the meat into small dice.

  2. Return the diced meat to the soup.

  3. Add the cooked green peas, sliced carrots, white wine, and season with pepper and salt.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the flavour and helps brown the pigeon pieces when fried.
Flour
Mixed with butter to thicken the soup as it cooks.
Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long simmer.
Clear soup
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole dish.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the finished soup.

The step that matters

Frying the pigeon pieces in butter. Searing the pieces until golden builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed pieces make a flatter-tasting soup.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, ham, thyme, parsley, celery, leek):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, ham, thyme, parsley, celery, leek. 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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