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Stewed Pigeon

A pigeon stewed in stock with onion or celery, rice, parsley, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pigeon into neat joints or truss it whole.

Cook

  1. Place the pigeon in a saucepan with the stock, vegetables, and rice.

  2. Simmer gently for two hours until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with rice around and sprinkle with parsley.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeon
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Rice
Thickens the cooking liquid slightly as its starch releases during simmering.
Stock or water
Forms the cooking liquid that gently braises the pigeon and keeps it moist.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for two hours. A gentle simmer breaks down connective tissue slowly, making the pigeon tender without toughening the meat. A hard boil would tighten the muscle fibres and dry the meat out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, parsley, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, parsley, pepper. 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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