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Pigeons, Stewed

A stew of young pigeons cooked with salt, water, pepper, butter, flour, parsley, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pigeons, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck and draw the pigeons, then cut them into quarters.

  2. Place the quarters in a stewpan with salt and enough water to cover them three-quarters.

Stew and thicken

  1. Cover and stew gently until almost done.

  2. Add pepper and butter, then simmer until fully cooked.

  3. Remove the pigeons and thicken the gravy with flour mixed in.

  4. Stir in chopped parsley and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat, let cool for a minute, then stir in the beaten egg.

  2. Return the pigeons to the pan to heat through and serve immediately.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 meat, which becomes tender through slow, gentle stewing.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it heats, giving it body.
Egg
Added off the heat to enrich and thicken the gravy without curdling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the gravy a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg off the heat. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the gravy is too hot the beaten egg can scramble and turn grainy. Cooling it briefly before stirring in the egg lets it thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, flour, egg, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, egg, cream. 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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