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Pigeon Soup

A hearty soup made with pigeon, beef, veal, onions, carrot, turnip, herbs, and spices, finished with ketchup, lemon, sherry, and served with meatballs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pigeon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the meat and tongue into 1-inch pieces and set aside.

  2. Add the beef, veal, onions, carrot, turnip, sweet herbs, and black pepper to the water used to boil the head.

  3. Boil slowly for 4-5 hours.

  4. Strain.

  5. Cool to remove fat.

Make the thickened base

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add flour.

  3. Brown while stirring constantly.

  4. Add a little of the soup and parsley.

  5. Boil for 15 minutes.

  6. Strain.

Finish and serve

  1. Combine the strained mixture with the meat and pounded brains.

  2. Boil for 1 hour.

  3. Stir in ketchup, lemon juice, cayenne, salt, and sherry.

  4. Serve in a tureen with force-meat balls and egg balls.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned with butter, it forms a roux that thickens the soup.
Butter
Melted and browned with flour to start the roux, adding nutty flavour.
Leg of beef
Long simmering breaks down its connective tissue, enriching the broth with body.
Onions
Softened during long simmering, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Sherry
Added at the end, it contributes acidity and aroma to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Browning the flour while stirring constantly. Flour browns unevenly and can scorch quickly over direct heat. Constant stirring keeps it cooking evenly, so the roux thickens well and tastes nutty rather than bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, carrot, turnip, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, carrot, turnip, pepper, butter, flour. 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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