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Pigeons with Peas

Pigeons with peas is a stew of browned pigeons simmered in gravy with peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pigeons with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pigeons

  1. Heat a little butter in a stew pan and add the pigeons to brown them.

  2. Dredge the pigeons with flour.

  3. Moisten the pigeons with gravy and cook until it reaches a sauce consistency.

Add the peas

  1. When half cooked, add 1 quart of peas and stir often.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Flour + peastop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 browns and becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the pigeons and carries flavour into the dish.
Flour
Coats the pigeons so the gravy thickens into a sauce around them.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid that moistens the pigeons and forms the sauce as it reduces.
Peas
Add sweetness and a fresh vegetable element to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Moisten the pigeons with gravy and cook until it reaches a sauce consistency. Flour on the pigeons thickens the liquid only as it heats and simmers. Cooking too briefly leaves the sauce thin, while overcooking can reduce it too far and toughen the meat.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

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