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Pigeon Stew

A stew of pigeons cooked with butter, lard, flour, broth, herbs, cloves, garlic, onions, mushrooms, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Pigeon Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the pigeons

  1. Heat butter and lard or suet in a stewpan until hot.

  2. Add pigeons and cook until browned, then remove them from the pan.

  3. Add a pinch of flour and cook until it turns a rich brown color.

  4. Slowly dilute the flour with broth, then return the pigeons to the pan.

Stew and finish

  1. Season with salt, pepper, sweet herbs, cloves, garlic, and mushrooms if using.

  2. Cover the stewpan and cook until the pigeons are nearly done.

  3. Add the small onions that have been stewed in butter.

  4. Pour in the white wine and finish cooking until the sauce thickens.

  5. Serve the pigeons on a plate and pour the sauce over them.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Main protein that becomes tender during the covered stew and flavors the sauce.
Flour
Browned and then diluted with broth, it thickens the sauce and adds color and nutty flavor.
Broth
Liquid base that, with the browned flour, forms the body of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce as it reduces and thickens.
Butter
Fat for browning the pigeons and adds richness to the sauce and onions.
Lard or chopped suet
Fat for browning the pigeons, adding richness and savory flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. The flour must reach a rich brown before the broth is added. Browned flour gives the sauce color and a deeper flavor, while flour added raw and not cooked tends to taste pasty. Dilute it slowly to avoid lumps.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, garlic, mushroom, onion, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, garlic, mushroom, onion, white wine. 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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