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Pigeon Soup

A soup made from pigeons, water, spices, salt, herbs, spinach, butter, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Pigeon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut down 2 of the oldest pigeons and place them with the necks, pinions, livers, and gizzards of the others into 4 quarts of water.

  2. Boil until the substance is extracted.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Prepare the pigeons and bread

  1. Season the pigeons with mixed spices and salt.

  2. Truss the pigeons for stewing.

  3. Melt ¼ pound of butter in a frying pan until it boils. Mix in a handful of bread crumbs and stir with a knife until they are a fine brown.

Finish the soup

  1. Boil the whole pigeons in the soup with the herbs and fried bread until tender.

  2. If the soup is not seasoned enough, add more mixed spices 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. Chive + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the meat that becomes tender during the long simmer in the broth.
Butter
Fat that is heated and carries flavour into the bread crumbs, helping them brown.
Bread crumbs
Toasted in butter until brown, adding nutty flavour and body to the soup.
Spinach
Adds leafy body and a mild, green flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Browning the bread crumbs in butter. Butter browns quickly once it starts to foam and the crumbs can scorch before reaching an even golden brown. Stirring constantly over steady heat gives an even colour and a toasted flavour rather than a bitter, burnt taste.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, chive, butter, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, chive, butter, bread. 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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