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Stewed Pigeons

A stew of pigeons cooked with butter, water, onions, parsley, and browned flour, seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the pigeons

  1. Place the pigeons in a pot with 1 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of butter for each pigeon.

  2. Cover the pot tightly and cook over low heat until the pigeons are dark brown, turning occasionally.

  3. Remove the pigeons and keep them warm in a colander over a pan of hot water.

Make the gravy

  1. Finely chop the giblets, onion, and parsley, and add them to the pot.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then bring to a boil and thicken with browned flour.

Finish the stew

  1. Return the pigeons to the pot, cover tightly, and cook slowly until tender.

  2. If there isn't enough liquid for the gravy, add boiling water before adding the giblets.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 slow covered cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the pigeons brown in the pot.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as its starch swells with heat.
Onion
Adds aroma and mild sweetness to the gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Browning the pigeons until dark brown. Browning over low heat develops deep flavor through the Maillard reaction, which gives the gravy its color and savory taste. Turning them keeps the browning even.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour, parsley. 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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