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Compote of Pigeons a LA Macedoine

A stew of pigeons simmered with stock, spices, and tomato sauce, served over mashed potatoes and topped with mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Compote of Pigeons a LA Macedoine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and braise

  1. Split the pigeons and trim them neatly, removing the feet and breastbone.

  2. Heat the butter in a stewpan until hot, then chop and fry the onion until slightly brown.

  3. Add the flour and let it brown slightly, then add the stock, mace, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  4. Bring to a boil, then add the pigeons and let them stew gently for at least an hour until tender.

Plate and serve

  1. On a serving dish, create a circle of mashed potatoes, arrange the pigeons around it, and pour hot tomato sauce over the dish.

  2. Blanch, dry, and finely chop the parsley, then lightly sprinkle it over the pigeons.

  3. In the center of the dish, place cooked mushrooms or a macedoine of vegetables.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle stewing.
Flour
Browned in butter to thicken and add color and a nutty flavor to the sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion and browning the flour, adding richness and flavor.
Onion
Fried until slightly brown, adding savory sweetness and depth to the stock base.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and color, and moistens the dish when poured over the pigeons.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and texture as a garnish at the centre of the dish.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour cooked in butter must be stirred until lightly browned before liquid is added. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, while over-browning gives bitterness and darkens the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, flour, butter, pepper, mushroom, tomato):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, flour, butter, pepper, mushroom, tomato. 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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