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Pigeon Soup

A soup made from roasted pigeon meat, vegetables, and stock, thickened with butter and flour.

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 ↓

Pigeon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roast the pigeons lightly and set aside the best meat.

  2. Flour the bones and crush them in a mortar.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, fry the carrot, onion, ham, and celery in butter with the bay leaf, parsley, thyme, cloves, and mace until browned.

  2. Add the crushed pigeon bodies and the brown thickening or butter rolled in flour. Moisten with stock or water.

  3. Bring to a boil and skim thoroughly.

  4. Let simmer gently for 1 hour.

  5. Strain the soup and pulp the vegetables through a tamis.

  6. Return the soup to the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the pigeon meat and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Skim again.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 and, through their bones, the body of the soup.
Carrot, onion, and celery
Build the aromatic base, adding sweetness and savoury depth as they brown in butter.
Butter
Fat that carries the aromatics and helps them brown, adding richness.
Brown thickening or butter rolled in flour
Thickens the soup as the flour cooks into the liquid.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the stock base.

The step that matters

Skim thoroughly after bringing to a boil. Foam and fat rising from the bones and meat would cloud the broth and taste greasy, so removing them early keeps the soup clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, ham, celery, butter, parsley, thyme, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, ham, celery, butter, parsley, thyme, clove. 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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