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Pigeons, Stewed, with Mushrooms

Stewed pigeons cooked with bacon, butter, flour, gravy, mushroom ketchup, spices, herbs, onions, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Pluck, draw, and singe the pigeons. Cut off their heads and necks.

  2. Truss the pigeons with the legs inwards.

  3. In a stewpan, heat the bacon and butter until the pigeons are lightly browned. Remove and drain the pigeons.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix the flour smoothly with the remaining butter in the pan. Moisten with gravy or water and add mushroom ketchup, pepper, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Stir the gravy over heat until it boils.

Stew and serve

  1. Strain the gravy into a clean saucepan with the pigeons, bacon, parsley, thyme, and onions. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the herbs. Add the mushrooms and stew for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Serve the pigeons on a hot dish, pouring the gravy over them and adding the bacon, onions, and mushrooms.

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

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 through long gentle simmering.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and smoky flavour that seasons the gravy and stew.
Butter
Browns the pigeons and bacon and enriches the gravy with fat and flavour.
Fine flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the gravy.
Button onions
Soften during stewing and add sweetness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and moistening it smoothly. Flour mixed into fat and then liquid must be stirred well as it heats, or lumps form that do not disperse. Bringing the gravy to a boil also fully cooks the flour, removing its raw taste and thickening the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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