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Pigeons with Peas

A stew of pigeons simmered with peas, sweet herbs, bacon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Pigeons with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the pigeons

  1. Melt butter and bacon in a stewpan.

  2. Add the cleaned and trussed pigeons and brown them.

  3. Stir in the peas and sweet herbs.

  4. Add flour and moisten with stock.

Stew and thicken

  1. Let the pigeons stew slowly.

  2. When the peas are nearly done, mix butter with flour.

  3. Add the mixture to the stew to thicken.

  4. Serve warm.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

  3. Peas + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the pan for browning the birds.
Peas
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they cook down.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a light sauce, both stirred in and as a butter paste.
Stock
Provides the liquid that moistens the pan and forms the base of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with flour to form a thickening paste.

The step that matters

Let the pigeons stew slowly. Pigeon meat is lean and can turn tough if cooked hard or fast. A gentle, low simmer lets the connective tissue soften while the liquid stays in the pot.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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