Skip to main content
Main

A Fricassee of Pigeons

A fricassee of pigeons simmered in claret and water, seasoned with mace, onion, sweet herbs, finished with butter and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Fricassee of Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the pigeons, claret, and water.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, mace, onion, and sweet herbs.

  3. Add the butter and cover the pan.

  4. Let it stew until there is enough sauce.

  5. Remove the onions and sweet herbs.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Heat the egg yolks in the pan, pushing the meat to one side and the gravy to the other.

  2. Stir in the egg yolks, mixing continuously to prevent curdling.

  3. Once the sauce is thick, combine everything and serve the meat with the sauce poured over it.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 meat that is stewed until tender in the claret and water.
Claret
Forms the wine-based liquid that becomes the gravy and adds acidity and flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the gravy as it melts into the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce through gentle heat, giving it a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the sauce. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but curdle if they get too hot or are added without constant stirring. Continuous mixing spreads the heat evenly so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, butter, flour, egg, nutmeg. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes