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Pigeon Soup

A soup made from roasted pigeon meat and bones simmered with herbs, vegetables, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pigeon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Roast the pigeons just enough to warm them through.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and flour the bones well.

Make the soup

  1. Pound the bones in a mortar and stew them in 1½ pints of gravy.

  2. Add the butter, tarragon, chervil, onions, shallots, parsley, basil, turnips, carrots, cayenne, and mace.

  3. Boil slowly for 2 hours, then strain through a colander.

  4. Pulp through a tammy, then add the pigeon meat back into the saucepan.

  5. Let it simmer for 1 hour and serve.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the meat that is returned to the soup as the main protein.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth in which the bones are stewed.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it thickens the soup and adds richness and body.
Turnips
Add sweetness and body as they soften during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Pulp through a tammy. Pressing the cooked solids through a fine sieve gives the soup a smooth texture; skipping or rushing it leaves coarse fragments and a grainy mouthfeel.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, tarragon, chervil, shallot, parsley, basil):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, tarragon, chervil, shallot, parsley, basil. 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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