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Pigeons Served with Broth

Pigeons served on toast with spinach, olives, and a thickened broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pigeons Served with Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Clean and truss the pigeons, then half cover them with boiling water.

  2. Add the onion, bay leaf, carrot, and parsley; simmer until tender.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Plate and serve

  1. On slices of toast, make nests of well-seasoned spinach and place the pigeons on top.

  2. Garnish with stuffed olives and serve hot with strained broth thickened with flour and water.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Carrot + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Spinach + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 and flavorful as it simmers gently in the broth.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and mild sweetness to the simmering broth.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks.
Flour
Its starch swells in the hot broth, thickening it to a smoother, heavier texture.

The step that matters

Simmer the pigeons until tender. A gentle simmer cooks the meat evenly and keeps it tender. A hard boil toughens muscle fibers and can make the broth cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, pepper, spinach, olive, 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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