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Stewed Pigeon

A stew of pigeon cooked with stock, vegetables, and rice, seasoned with parsley, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pigeon into neat joints or truss it.

  2. Stew the pigeon whole.

Cook

  1. Place the pigeon in a saucepan with the stock, vegetables, and rice.

  2. Simmer gently for two hours until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with rice and sprinkle with 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Pigeon
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Stock or water
Supplies the cooking liquid that keeps the meat moist and carries flavour.
Rice
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the liquid and adding body to the stew.
Onion or celery
Adds aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for two hours. A gentle simmer breaks down the tough connective tissue in the pigeon slowly. A hard boil toughens the meat and dries out the fibres, so the stew stays at a low simmer until tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, parsley, pepper. 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.

More pigeon stew recipes

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