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Pigeons with Olives

Pigeon quarters braised with olives in espagnole sauce and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and butter 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 with Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Divide each pigeon into quarters.

  2. Fry the quarters brown in the butter.

  3. Prepare the sauce in a stewpan.

Braise and cook

  1. Add the pigeons to the sauce.

  2. Cover tightly.

  3. Cook gently for about 40 minutes or until tender.

  4. Braise or stew the olives in a little good stock.

Serve

  1. Strain the sauce over the pigeons.

  2. Serve the pigeons on a hot dish.

  3. Group the olives at the base.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter 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 through gentle, covered cooking in the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the rich, thick braising liquid that flavours and moistens the pigeon.
Butter
Fat used to brown the pigeon quarters, building colour and savoury flavour.
French olives
Add a briny, savoury accent and serve as a garnish alongside the pigeon.

The step that matters

Cook gently and covered for about 40 minutes. Gentle, covered heat breaks down connective tissue slowly, so the pigeon becomes tender without drying out. Boiling vigorously toughens the meat and can make the sauce cloudy or reduce it too fast.

“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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