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Stewed Pigeons

A stew of pigeons cooked with butter, water, onion, parsley, pepper, salt, and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Stewed Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick, clean, and wash the pigeons.

  2. Place the pigeons in a pot with 1 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of butter per pigeon.

  3. Cover the pot tightly and cook on low heat until the pigeons are a nice brown color.

  4. Occasionally turn the pigeons to ensure they are well coated with the liquid.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the pigeons and keep them warm in a colander over hot water.

  2. Chop the giblets, onion, and parsley finely.

  3. If there isn't enough liquid for gravy, add boiling water before adding the giblets.

  4. Add the giblets to the pot with pepper and salt, bring to a boil, and thicken with browned flour.

Finish cooking

  1. Return the pigeons to the pot, cover tightly, and cook slowly until tender.

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

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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 through slow covered cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the pigeons brown in the pot.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into gravy.
Giblets (in the method)
Add savory depth and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the pigeons slowly until tender after returning them to the pot. Covered, gentle heat breaks down the connective tissue in the muscle and keeps the meat moist. Cooking too hard or uncovered can toughen the meat and reduce the liquid too quickly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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