Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Pigeons, with Macaroni

A stew of pigeons simmered with onions, mushrooms, herbs, and stock, served over boiled macaroni.

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

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeons, with Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan over low heat.

  3. Brown the pigeons in the butter on both sides.

  4. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the pigeons.

  5. Remove the pigeons and keep them warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Add a pinch of flour to the butter, stirring well.

  2. Add the small onions and mushrooms to the butter for flavor.

  3. Pour in the stock and stir well.

  4. Drain the macaroni and add it to the gravy.

  5. Let the mixture simmer for 20 minutes.

  6. Return the pigeons to the stewpan.

  7. Let the pigeons cook until tender.

  8. Remove the bunch of herbs.

  9. Thicken the sauce with butter and flour.

  10. Heat the sauce.

Serve

  1. Place the pigeons on a hot dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the macaroni and pigeons.

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

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

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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
Browned first, then stewed until tender, forming the main meat of the dish.
Macaroni
Boiled, then simmered in the gravy to soak up flavor and add body.
Butter
Fat for browning the pigeons and building the base of the sauce.
Flour
Stirred into the butter and later used to thicken the sauce.
Stock
Liquid that forms the gravy the pigeons and macaroni cook in.
Onions
Small onions cooked in the butter to add savory flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with butter and flour. Flour needs to be cooked into fat and liquid evenly, or the sauce can turn lumpy or taste raw. Stirring while adding it helps the starch dissolve and thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes