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Curry of Pigeons

A pigeon curry simmered with onions, mushrooms, veal stock, and curry spices, thickened with brown thickening and served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Curry of Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the pigeon

  1. Fry the pigeon quarters in butter until browned.

  2. Remove the pigeon quarters and set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same butter, fry the sliced onions until soft.

  2. Add the chopped mushrooms and veal stock, stirring together.

  3. Mix in the curry paste and curry powder.

  4. Boil until the onions are soft.

  5. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  6. Add the brown thickening.

  7. Boil until the sauce thickens to custard consistency.

  8. Remove from heat, let cool slightly.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the pigeon pieces to heat in the sauce without boiling.

  2. Serve on a hot dish with a border of rice.

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

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

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

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

  3. Mushroom + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  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 is browned first to build flavour in the curry.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the body of the sauce.
Veal stock
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth for the curry sauce.
Brown thickening
Thickens the sauce to a custard-like consistency as it boils.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy savour that blends into the sieved sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce to custard consistency. Thickening relies on starch swelling as it heats, so the sauce must be simmered long enough to thicken, yet kept from boiling hard once the pigeon is added so the meat stays tender and the sauce does not break or scorch.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, veal, rice, cream, apple):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, veal, rice, cream, apple. 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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