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Pigeon Compote

Pigeons stuffed with a bacon, bread and egg mixture, larded, fried, and stewed in beef stock, served with forcemeat balls and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pigeon Compote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Truss the pigeons as for boiling.

  2. Grate the bread crumbs.

  3. Chop the bacon, thyme, parsley, onion, and lemon peel finely. Season the mixture with salt and pepper. Mix in the eggs.

  4. Stuff the mixture into the craws of the pigeons.

  5. Lard the breasts.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the pigeons until brown.

  2. Place the pigeons in a pot with beef stock.

  3. Stew the pigeons for 45 minutes.

  4. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour.

  5. Serve with force-meat balls around the dish.

  6. Strain the gravy over the pigeons.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together in the birds.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk and absorb moisture to give the stuffing body.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing and the birds.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked with butter.
Beef stock
Provides the liquid for stewing and forms the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew the pigeons for 45 minutes. Stewing gently in liquid keeps the lean pigeon meat tender; boiling hard can toughen the proteins and dry the meat. Keeping the stock at a low simmer lets the connective tissue soften slowly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, thyme, parsley, lemon, pepper, egg, beef):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, thyme, parsley, lemon, pepper, egg, beef. 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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