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Pigeons a LA Craupaudine, and Piquant Sauce

Pigeons à la Craupaudine is a French pigeon dish cooked with butter, shallots, herbs, mushrooms, and bread crumbs, served with piquant sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pigeons a LA Craupaudine, and Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the pigeons at the belly and turn the breast over.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan with chopped shallot, parsley, thyme, mushrooms, pepper, and salt.

  3. Place the pigeons on a dish, not too close together, and pour the melted butter mixture over them.

  4. When the butter begins to cool, roll the pigeons in bread crumbs.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the pigeons in a buttered sauté pan and cook until the underside is brown.

  2. Once browned, lay them on a cloth to absorb excess butter and arrange them around a serving dish with sauce in the center.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 is split and cooked whole for even browning.
Butter
Carries the herbs and aromatics, and browns the bread crumb coating in the pan.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns and helps the outside set.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the butter sauce.
Chopped shallot
Adds mild sweetness and aroma to the buttered mixture.

The step that matters

Browning the underside in the buttered pan. The pigeons must brown well on the underside without overcooking. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction, which needs a hot, dry surface, so the pigeons should be patted of excess butter before cooking and not crowded in the pan.

“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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