Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Pigeon

A pigeon stewed with rice, celery, and stock, served with parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the pigeon or cut it into neat pieces.

Stew

  1. Place the pigeon in a stewpan with stock or water, celery, and rice.

  2. Bring to a boil, then simmer gently for 1.5 to 2 hours until tender.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a hot dish, arrange the rice around the pigeon, and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  3. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeon
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Rice
Thickens the cooking liquid slightly and absorbs flavour as it cooks.
Celery
Adds a mild, aromatic savoury flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. A rolling boil toughens the meat's proteins and can break up the rice, while gentle simmering lets connective tissue slowly soften into tender meat.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, celery):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, celery. 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes