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Pigeons Aux Truffes, or with Truffles

Pigeons stuffed with truffles, mushrooms, parsley, and thyme, roasted in butter paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pigeons Aux Truffes, or with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Truss the pigeons as for stewing.

  2. Stuff the pigeons with stewed truffles, chopped mushrooms, parsley, and thyme.

  3. Wrap the pigeons in butter paper and secure it.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pigeons at 400°F (200°C) until well done and light brown.

  2. Remove from the spit and place on a serving dish.

  3. Garnish with truffles in sauce and serve.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to tender, well-done meat.
Truffles
Add a concentrated, earthy aroma that defines the dish's flavour.
Chopped mushrooms
Add savoury, umami depth to the stuffing and moisture within the bird.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the pigeon brown and stay moist while roasting.

The step that matters

Wrap the pigeons in butter paper and secure it.. The wrapping holds fat and moisture against the bird while it roasts, so the meat stays juicy rather than drying out before it is cooked through.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, mushroom, thyme, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, mushroom, thyme, butter. 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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