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Pigeons a LA Venaison

Pigeons à la Venaison is a braised pigeon dish with vinegar, bacon, onion, carrot, bay leaf, lemon peel, peppercorns, and a sour cream flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pigeons a LA Venaison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the pigeons with coarse sea salt and soak them in vinegar and water for 24 hours.

  2. Drain the pigeons and wrap slices of bacon around them.

Braise

  1. In a small kettle, heat butter and brown the pigeons on all sides.

  2. Add the vinegar and water mixture, onion, carrot, bay leaf, lemon peel, peppercorns, and sugar.

  3. Cover the kettle tightly and cook in the Caloric for one hour.

Finish the gravy

  1. Mix flour with sour cream and stir it slowly into the boiling gravy.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Main meat, which becomes tender during the long soak and slow covered cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that bastes the birds as they cook.
Butter
Browns the pigeons, building colour and a rich, roasted flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the soaking liquid, helping to tenderise the meat and sharpen the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the pigeons instead of staying thin.
Sour cream
Gives the gravy a creamy body and a light tang that balances the richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and sour cream into the boiling gravy. Sour cream can curdle or split when it meets very hot liquid. Mixing it with flour first and stirring slowly helps the proteins stay dispersed and the gravy thicken smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, butter, onion, carrot, sugar, flour, cream):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, onion, carrot, sugar, flour, cream. 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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