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Four Pigeons Larded, and a Ragout of Cocks Combs

A ragout made by larding four pigeons with bacon and cooking them in stock with onions, herbs, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Four Pigeons Larded, and a Ragout of Cocks Combs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Draw in the legs of the pigeons and fill them with farce.

  2. Lard the pigeons with bacon.

Braise

  1. Line a stewpan with bacon sheets.

  2. Add stock, onions, thyme, parsley, bay leaves, and mace to the stewpan.

  3. Place the pigeons in the stewpan.

  4. Cover the stewpan with bacon sheets.

  5. Simmer on low heat for 30 minutes.

  6. Put lighted charcoal on the cover of the stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Finish the pigeons as you would other larded dishes.

  2. Strain the braise.

  3. Skim the fat.

  4. Serve the braise with the ragout.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Thyme + macetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 filled with farce and braised until tender.
Bacon
Lards the birds and lines the pot, adding fat and savoury flavour to the meat and braise.
Stock
Forms the liquid of the braise, carrying flavour and keeping the birds moist as they cook.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and body to the braising liquid.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, thyme, parsley. 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.

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