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Salmis of Pigeons

A pigeon stew simmered in a sauce of butter, onions, mushrooms, herbs, port wine, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Salmis of Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sliced onions, mushrooms, bones, parsley, thyme, and pepper. Fry for 20 minutes with the lid on.

  3. Dredge in 1 ounce of flour and stir well.

  4. Pour in ⅓ cup of port wine, 1 teaspoon of bovril, and 1 pint of stock. Add salt to taste.

  5. Boil for 30 minutes, skimming as needed. Remove the bones.

  6. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve or tammy for a smooth texture.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the cold pigeons into pieces and place them in a stewpan. Cover with the sauce.

  2. Heat gently until almost boiling, then simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Arrange the pigeon pieces on a dish and garnish with button mushrooms and croutons.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 gently cooks in the sauce and becomes tender.
Butter
Fat that softens the onions and mushrooms and carries their flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the pigeon pieces rather than running off.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity aroma that balances the savoury stock.
Onion
Softens and sweetens during frying, building the base flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat gently until almost boiling, then simmer. Thickened sauces can scorch or break if boiled hard. Gentle heat keeps the flour-thickened sauce smooth while the pigeon warms through and stays tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme, port wine, mushroom, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, port wine, mushroom, pepper, 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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