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Pigeon Soup

A savory soup made with pigeons, ham, vegetables, and herbs, simmered in clear broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Mix the butter and flour together in a bowl.

  2. Add the chopped ham to the mixture.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the soup with the ham mixture and add the cut‑up pigeons fried in butter.

  2. Flavor the soup with thyme, parsley, celery, leek, and bay leaf.

  3. Cook for one hour, then strain the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the meat into small dice and return it to the soup.

  2. Stir in the cooked green peas, sliced carrots, white wine, pepper, and salt.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  5. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Fat for frying the pigeons and adding richness to the base.
Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which is browned first and then diced back into the soup.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the finished soup.
Leek
Adds mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Strain the soup after cooking for one hour. Simmering for a full hour extracts flavor from the pigeon, herbs and vegetables, while straining removes the solids so the broth stays clear and smooth before the meat is returned.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, ham, thyme, parsley, celery, leek):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, ham, thyme, parsley, celery, leek. 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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