Skip to main content
Main

Pigeons in a Marinade

Pigeons marinated in lemon, vinegar, and spices, then fried and served with a butter‑tarragon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pigeons in a Marinade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the pigeons in half and remove the backbone.

  2. Marinate the pigeon halves in lemon juice, vinegar, salt, peppercorns, garlic, carrot, onion, parsley, and bay leaf for at least 6 hours.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a pan until hot.

  2. Coat the marinated pigeons in flour and fry until well done and golden brown.

  3. Place the fried pigeons on paper to drain excess fat.

Sauce and serve

  1. Prepare a strong butter sauce and stir in tarragon vinegar.

  2. Optionally fry mushrooms in the remaining marinate.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the meat, which is tenderised by the marinade and browned by frying.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns in the hot lard and gives the frying a crisp surface.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat that browns the coated pigeon.
Lemon juice
Acidity in the marinade gently softens and flavours the pigeon meat.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds sharp, aromatic acidity that brightens the butter sauce.

The step that matters

Frying until well done and golden brown. Frying the floured pigeon too briefly or too hot leaves the meat underdone or the coating burnt before the centre cooks. Moderate heat lets the flour brown evenly while the meat cooks through.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, clove, garlic, carrot, onion, parsley, flour):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, garlic, carrot, onion, parsley, flour. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes