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Pigeon Soup

A soup made with pigeon stock, livers, gizzards, and whole pigeons, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pigeon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Truss the pigeons for boiling and season them inside with pepper and salt.

  2. Dust the pigeons with flour and brown them in a frying pan with a little butter.

Make the soup

  1. Make a stock or gravy soup as directed.

  2. Add the livers and gizzards of the pigeons to the soup and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Mix a little butter and flour, then stir it into the soup to thicken.

  4. Strain the soup and add the pigeons.

  5. Let the soup with the pigeons boil gently for 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

  6. Serve in a tureen.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the pigeons for browning and, mixed with butter, thickens the soup.
Butter
Fat that browns the dusted pigeons and enriches the thickened soup.
Livers and gizzards of pigeons
Simmered in the soup to add rich, meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Thickening the soup with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked in fat and stirred into hot liquid to avoid lumps and raw flour taste; the soup should then simmer so the starch thickens fully.

“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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