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Compote of Pigeons a LA Macedoine

A pigeon compote cooked with stock, spices, tomato sauce, and served with mashed potatoes, mushrooms, and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 the pigeons

  1. Split the pigeons.

  2. Trim them neatly, removing the feet and breast-bone.

Make the stew

  1. In a hot stewpan, melt the butter and fry the chopped onion until slightly brown.

  2. Add the flour and cook until slightly brown.

  3. Stir in the stock, mace, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Add the pigeons and let them stew gently for at least an hour until tender.

Plate and garnish

  1. Create a circle of mashed potatoes on a serving dish.

  2. Arrange the pigeons around the mashed potatoes.

  3. Pour the hot tomato sauce around the pigeons.

  4. Blanch the parsley, wring it dry, and chop it finely.

  5. Sprinkle the chopped parsley over the pigeons.

  6. Cook the mushrooms.

  7. Prepare a macedoine of vegetables for the center of the dish.

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

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 with the butter and onion, it thickens the stock into a sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion, adding richness and browning flavour.
Onion
Browned in butter to build savoury flavour in the stew.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and tomato flavour to the dish when poured around the pigeons.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture alongside the pigeons.

The step that matters

Stewing the pigeons gently until tender. Boiling vigorously toughens muscle fibres and can leave the meat dry, while slow, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue so the pigeon becomes tender.

Swap the mace

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

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

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