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Pigeons Au Court-Bouillon

Pigeons cooked in a fragrant broth of wine, stock, herbs, and aromatics, then served with the reduced sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 Au Court-Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss and lard the pigeons with fat bacon.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the pigeons with parsley, green onions, garlic, shallots, cloves, bay leaf, thyme, basil, parsnip, carrot, onions, butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Moisten with white wine and stock.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew over low heat until the pigeons are cooked through.

  2. Strain the sauce.

  3. Reduce the sauce if necessary, adding verjuice or vinegar to taste.

  4. Serve the sauce over the pigeons.

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. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Thyme + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Main protein; slow stewing over low heat keeps the meat tender and cooked through.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that bastes the lean pigeon meat and carries savory flavor as it melts.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the stewing liquid, rounding out the sauce.
White wine
Acidic liquid that helps extract and balance flavors from the vegetables and aromatics.
Stock
Provides savory body and moisture to the sauce as it stews and reduces.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce. Reducing concentrates flavor and thickens the liquid, but over-reduction makes it salty and intense, so tasting and adjusting with verjuice or vinegar at the end keeps it balanced.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, clove, garlic, shallot, thyme, basil, parsnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, clove, garlic, shallot, thyme, basil, parsnip. 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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