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Pigeons, Stewed, with Green Peas

A stew of pigeons cooked with bacon, butter, flour, stock, green peas, parsley, thyme, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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, Stewed, with Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Pluck, draw, and singe the pigeons. Cut off the heads and necks, and place the livers back inside.

  2. Truss securely and tie with twine.

Brown and make the gravy

  1. Cut the bacon into small pieces and place in a stewpan with the pigeons and butter. Cook over moderate heat, turning until browned.

  2. Remove the pigeons and drain.

  3. Make a roux by mixing flour with the fat in the saucepan, then moisten with stock and stir until it boils.

Simmer and serve

  1. Strain the gravy into a clean stewpan with the pigeons, bacon, parsley, thyme, peas, and add pepper and salt if needed. Simmer gently until the peas are cooked.

  2. Remove the herbs and serve the pigeons on a hot dish with gravy poured over and peas and bacon around.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Peas + thymetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main meat, which becomes tender during gentle simmering in the gravy.
Streaky bacon
Adds savoury fat and smoky flavour that seasons the gravy and the dish.
Butter
Carries the browning of the pigeons and bacon and enriches the flavour of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy when cooked with the fat as a roux.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, tender texture to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Making the roux. Flour must cook in the fat before stock is added; otherwise the gravy can taste raw and turn lumpy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, thyme, pepper. 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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