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Pigeons a LA Crapaudine

Pigeons à la Crapaudine are pigeons cooked with herbs, mushrooms, shallots, butter, nutmeg, lemon juice, pepper, and salt, coated with egg yolk and breadcrumbs fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Pigeons a LA Crapaudine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Cut off the wings.

  2. Draw in the legs.

  3. Cut the breast to lay it back.

Make the filling

  1. Mix sweet herbs, chopped mushrooms, chopped shallots, butter, grated nutmeg, lemon juice, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Simmer the mixture until almost done.

  3. Place the pigeons on a dish and let them cool slightly.

Coat and cook

  1. Brush the pigeons with egg yolks and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in boiling lard until lightly colored, or broil them.

  3. Serve with cullis sauce and sharp sauce underneath.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 is opened flat so it cooks evenly.
Egg yolks
Brushed on the birds to help the bread crumbs adhere and form a golden coating.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust when fried or broiled.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mushroom and herb mixture.
Mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard until lightly colored. The lard must be hot enough to brown the egg and crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating soaks up fat and turns greasy before it crisps, while the meat is still underdone.

“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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