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Stewed Pigeons

A stew of pigeons simmered with bacon, salt pork, bread crumbs, and a lemon‑currant gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeons

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Clean and wash the pigeons carefully.

  2. Soak the pigeons in salt water for 1 hour.

  3. Rinse the inside of the pigeons with a mixture of baking soda and water.

  4. Stuff the pigeons with a mixture of bread crumbs and chopped salt pork.

  5. Season the stuffed pigeons with pepper.

  6. Sew up the pigeons.

Stew the pigeons

  1. Place the pigeons in a pot with enough cold water to cover them.

  2. Add a slice of fat bacon to each pigeon.

  3. Season the pigeons with pepper and nutmeg.

  4. Boil the pigeons slowly in a covered saucepan until tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the pigeons from the gravy.

  2. Keep the pigeons warm in a covered dish.

  3. Strain the gravy.

  4. Add lemon juice and currant jelly to the gravy.

  5. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  6. Boil the gravy.

  7. Pour the gravy over the pigeons before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 through slow, covered simmering.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the salt pork and bacon, keeping the stuffing moist and light.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the stuffing and the cooking liquid.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty color and flavor.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body that balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the pigeons slowly in a covered saucepan until tender.. A gentle, covered simmer lets connective tissue in the tough meat break down slowly. A hard boil toughens muscle fibers and can dry out the meat, so keep the liquid barely bubbling.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pork, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, flour):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pork, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, 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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