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Pigeon Compote

A stew of pigeons stuffed with bread, bacon, herbs, and eggs, simmered in beef stock and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Pigeon Compote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Truss the pigeons as for broiling.

  2. In a bowl, mix the crumbled bread, bacon, thyme, parsley, onion, lemon peel, salt, pepper, and eggs.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the craws of the pigeons.

  4. Lard the breasts of the pigeons.

  5. Fry until brown.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the pigeons in a stewpan with beef stock and stew for 45 minutes.

  2. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Serve the pigeons with force-meat balls around the dish.

  4. Strain the gravy 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 slow stewing.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and richness, keeping the stuffing and meat moist.
Bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the stuffing a light, soft body.
Butter and flour
Thicken the stewing liquid into a smooth, body-rich gravy.

The step that matters

Fry until brown. Browning the pigeons builds deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, which later carries into the stewed gravy. Pale birds give a flat sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, thyme, parsley, lemon, pepper, egg, butter. 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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