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Stewed Pigeons

A stew of quartered pigeons cooked with salt, pepper, butter, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and cut the pigeons into quarters.

  2. Wash and season the pigeons with salt and pepper.

Stew

  1. Place the pigeons in a stew pan and add enough water to nearly cover them.

  2. Add a piece of butter mixed with a little flour.

  3. Let them stew until tender.

  4. If the gravy is too thin, add more butter rubbed in flour and stew for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. Adjust seasoning if necessary and serve hot in a covered dish.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when mixed with butter.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour to the gravy. Flour mixed with fat must be fully worked in and simmered, otherwise it stays lumpy or tastes raw. Adding too much makes the gravy heavy, so it is added in small amounts and stewed until thickened.

“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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