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Pigeons, Curried

Pigeons cooked in a butter-based curry sauce served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pigeons, Curried

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare the curry sauce as directed.

  2. Strain the curry sauce.

  3. Return the sauce to the stewpan.

  4. Keep the sauce hot.

Cook the pigeons

  1. Cut each pigeon into 4 quarters.

  2. Fry the quarters in hot butter until browned.

  3. Drain the fried pigeons to remove excess fat.

  4. Add the pigeons to the sauce.

  5. Let the mixture simmer gently for about 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve the pigeons with boiled rice on the side.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Sauce + ricetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,396 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 main meat, which becomes tender during the long gentle simmer in the sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying the pigeon quarters, promoting browning and rich flavour.
Curry sauce
Carries the spice flavour and moisture that the pigeons absorb while simmering.

The step that matters

Frying the pigeon quarters until browned. Browning in hot butter builds savoury, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Draining off excess fat keeps the finished sauce from tasting greasy.

“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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