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Pigeons with Peas

A stew of pigeons simmered with peas, butter, flour, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pigeons with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pigeons

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the pigeons and cook until they are browned.

Make the stew

  1. Dredge the pigeons with flour and moisten with gravy to create a sauce.

  2. When the pigeons are halfway cooked, add the peas and stir often.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

  3. Flour + peastop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 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 meat that forms the body of the stew.
Butter
Carries heat for browning and adds rich flavour to the pan.
Flour
Coats the pigeons and thickens the gravy into a sauce.
Gravy
Supplies liquid and savoury flavour that moistens the pigeons and forms the sauce.
Peas
Add sweetness, bright colour and a tender texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the pigeons. Cooking the pigeons until browned triggers the Maillard reaction, which builds deep savoury flavour. Pale pigeons will taste flat in the finished stew, so let the surfaces colour before adding liquid.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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