Skip to main content
Main

Pigeons Aux Petits Pois

A dish of pigeon cooked with butter, bacon, peas, parsley, onions, flour, stock, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pigeons Aux Petits Pois

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Truss the feet of the pigeons to the body and place them in a saucepan with butter and bacon.

  2. Brown the pigeons slightly, then add the green peas, parsley, and green onions.

  3. Shake in a little flour and moisten with stock, warming over the fire.

  4. When done and the sauce is nearly consumed, add butter rolled in flour.

  5. Thicken the sauce with the beaten egg yolks and cream, then serve with the sauce.

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

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 cooks gently in butter and bacon fat.
Green peas
Add sweetness and body to the dish as they cook into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce when shaken in and warmed.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set gently with the cream.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks set when heated, so the sauce can curdle or turn grainy if it boils after they are added. Keep the heat low and stir gently.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, onion, flour, egg, cream. 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

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes