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Pigeon Broth

A broth made from roasted pigeon meat, stock, onion, butter, breadcrumbs, milk, pepper, salt, and port or sherry, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pigeon Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove the meat from the pigeons and place the bones and gravy in a pot with the stock to simmer.

  2. Mince the pigeon meat and onion, then blend with the butter and moistened breadcrumbs.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the mixture to the simmering stock and cook gently for 1 hour.

  2. Press the soup through a sieve, then season with pepper, salt, and port or sherry.

  3. Serve with slices of toasted bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the meat and rich flavour that give the broth its body.
Breadcrumbs
Soak up liquid and thicken the soup as they cook and are pressed through a sieve.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Onion
Adds savoury aromatic depth as it softens into the broth.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the pigeon and onion.

The step that matters

Press the soup through a sieve. Pressing forces the cooked meat and breadcrumbs through the mesh so the broth becomes smooth and evenly thickened rather than grainy or lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, pepper, sherry, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, pepper, sherry, bread. 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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