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Stewed Pigeons

A stew of young pigeons seasoned with pepper, salt, cloves, mace, sweet herbs, butter, wine, and pickled mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

Stewed Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Season the pigeons with pepper, coarse sea salt, cloves, mace, and sweet herbs.

  2. Wrap the seasoning in butter and place it inside each pigeon.

  3. Tie the neck and vent of the pigeons and half roast them.

Stew and finish

  1. In a stewpan, combine the pigeons with gravy, white wine, pickled mushrooms, peppercorns, mace, lemon peel, onion, and sweet herbs.

  2. Stew until cooked through, then thicken with butter and yolks of eggs.

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

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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 half roasting and then slow stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and, worked with the yolks, thickens the stewing liquor into a smooth sauce.
Yolks of eggs
Thicken the finished sauce and give it a rich, silky body.
Gravy
Forms the savoury liquid that the pigeons stew in, carrying flavour into the meat.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Thickening with butter and egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble and curdle if the liquid boils. Keep the stew below a simmer while stirring in the yolks and butter so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, butter, white wine, mushroom, lemon, onion):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, butter, white wine, mushroom, lemon, onion. 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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