Name: To Stew Pigeons
Ingredients: 6 pigeons; livers from 6 pigeons; 1 slice of fat bacon; a few sweet herbs; 1 shallot; port wine; flour; butter; walnut pickle

Why it works: Shallot and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Stew Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the flesh from one pigeon and combine it with the livers and bacon in a mortar. Beat well.
Mix in the sweet herbs and shallot to create a stuffing for the pigeons.
Cut off the legs and wings of the pigeons. Stew the bones and trimmings to make gravy.
Add a little mutton to the gravy if desired. Place the pigeons in the gravy, breast side down, and turn carefully until cooked.
Thicken the gravy with port wine, flour, and butter, then add walnut pickle.

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.

Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,081 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together380 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, shallot, port wine, flour, butter):

Chestnutfits better
Almondfits about as well
Walnutthe original
Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, shallot, port wine, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.