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Another Way to Stew Pigeons

A stew of pigeons cooked with butter, water, lemon peel, mace, parsley, and thickened with egg yolk, cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Another Way to Stew Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and clean the pigeons, then cut them into quarters.

Stew

  1. Place the pigeons and giblets in a stew pan with butter, water, lemon peel, mace, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cover the pan and stew until the pigeons are tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the sauce with the egg yolk beaten with cream and flour.

  2. Let the mixture stew for an additional 10 minutes before serving.

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

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 becomes tender through long, covered stewing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stew and carries flavour.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich body when heated gently.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its flavour.
Flour
Helps thicken the sauce so it clings to the pigeon pieces.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with egg yolk and cream. Egg yolk sets when heated, so it thickens the sauce, but if the mixture boils it can curdle or scramble. Stir in the beaten yolk, cream and flour off the heat or over very low heat to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon, parsley, pepper, egg, cream, flour):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, parsley, pepper, egg, cream, 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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