Skip to main content
Preserve

Pigeons a LA Crapaudine

Pigeons à la Crapeudine is a dish of pigeons seasoned, breaded, and broiled, served with a vinegar and shallot sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chive and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Pigeons a LA Crapaudine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the pigeons lengthwise and flatten them without breaking the skin.

  2. Rub the pigeons with oil and season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, chopped parsley, and chopped chives.

  3. Sprinkle bread crumbs over the pigeons.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the pigeons over a slow fire.

  2. Serve with sauce piquante made from vinegar, shallots, pepper, salt, and warmed butter.

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. Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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 flattened so it cooks evenly and stays intact.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the surface during broiling.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the warmed sauce piquante.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the butter in the sauce.

The step that matters

Broil over a slow fire. Broiling too fast can scorch the breadcrumb coating before the thick meat cooks through. A slower, steadier heat lets the pigeon cook evenly while the crumbs brown gently.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, bread, vinegar, shallot, butter):

  1. Chivethe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, bread, vinegar, shallot, butter. 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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes