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Pigeons, Compote of

A stew of pigeons with bacon, butter, onions, mushrooms, claret, and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Pigeons, Compote of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Truss the pigeons as if for boiling.

  2. Lard the breasts with bacon or cover with thin slices of bacon.

  3. Fry the pigeons in hot butter until browned all over.

  4. Drain the pigeons and place them in a large stewpan.

Stew

  1. Barely cover with gravy and add onions, mushrooms, claret, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Add tomato sauce and stew for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the pigeons on a hot dish with sauce around them.

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. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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 gentle stewing.
Butter
Browns the pigeons in the hot pan, building colour and savoury flavour.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the lean breast meat while it cooks.
Gravy
Forms the cooking liquid that moistens the birds and becomes the sauce.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that deepens the sauce during stewing.
Button mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy flavour and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently after browning. Barely covering the pigeons with gravy and keeping the heat low lets the meat become tender without drying out or toughening. A vigorous boil would tighten the muscle fibres and make the meat tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, pepper, tomato, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, pepper, tomato, sauce. 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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