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Pigeons, Fricasseed, Brown

A pigeon fricassee simmered in stock, claret, and brown sauce with herbs and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Pigeons, Fricasseed, Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Prepare the pigeons for boiling and season with pepper, salt, and mace.

  2. In a stewpan, heat the clarified butter and brown the pigeons all over.

  3. Remove the pigeons and drain them well.

Stew

  1. Place the pigeons in a clean saucepan with seasoned stock and claret.

  2. Add parsley, thyme, lemon rind, onions, pepper, salt, and cayenne.

  3. Cover and let the pigeons stew gently for 30 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the pigeons and thicken the sauce with brown thickening.

  2. Stir in mushrooms and lemon juice until smooth.

  3. Heat the pigeons in the sauce, then serve with gravy poured over.

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. Parsley + thymetop 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 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

Pigeons
Main protein; browning and gentle stewing keep the meat tender and flavourful.
Clarified butter
Fat for browning the pigeons, building savoury flavour on the surface of the meat.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the stewing liquid.
Brown thickening
Thickens the sauce so it coats the pigeons.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently and cover. Gentle, covered simmering keeps the pigeon meat tender and prevents the stock and claret from reducing too fast. A hard boil would toughen the meat and make the sauce bitter or overly concentrated.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, parsley, thyme, lemon, onion, mushroom):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, parsley, thyme, lemon, onion, mushroom. 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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