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Stewed Pigeons

A savory stew of pigeons cooked with mushrooms, stock, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Clean the pigeons and cut them in half.

  2. Fry the pigeons quickly in butter.

  3. If desired, add the ham, which can be fried with the pigeons.

Stew

  1. Place the pigeons in a stewpan with hot stock, mushrooms, and seasonings.

  2. Stew gently for 1 to 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the pigeons and keep them hot.

  2. Strain and thicken the gravy.

  3. Add lemon juice to the gravy and strain it over the dish.

  4. Serve the dish, garnishing with mushrooms.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 stewing in stock.
Butter
Browns the pigeons quickly on the surface, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Stock
Forms the liquid that cooks the birds gently and becomes the base of the gravy.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the stew and garnish the finished dish.
Flour
Thickens the stewing gravy so it coats the pigeons.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 1 to 2 hours. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue in the pigeons break down slowly, giving tender meat. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can make the gravy cloudy.

“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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