Skip to main content
Main

Pigeons with Petit Pois

Pigeons cooked with peas in a rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pigeons with Petit Pois

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Kill and feather the pigeons without plunging them into hot water.

  2. Singe the pigeons to remove any remaining feathers.

  3. Wash the pigeons in 3-4 cold waters and cut them in halves.

  4. Dredge the pigeons with salt and pepper, and let them sit for 1 hour.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the ghee or lard and fry the pigeons until rich brown, turning them over.

  2. Add the beef stock and simmer until the pigeons are tender.

  3. Pour the petit pois with their gravy over the pigeons and serve hot.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Ghee + beeftop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Ghee + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together690 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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 simmering in stock.
Ghee or lard
Conducts heat for frying and encourages browning on the pigeon surfaces.
Beef stock
Adds moisture and savoury flavour, and forms the gravy that cooks the birds tender.
Petit pois
Adds sweetness and colour, served with their gravy over the pigeons.

The step that matters

Frying the pigeons until rich brown. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds deep savoury flavour in the fat. Pigeon is dense, so the surface must brown well before the stock is added, or the gravy will taste flat.

“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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes