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Pigeon Soup

A savory soup made from roasted pigeon meat, bones, vegetables, herbs, and gravy, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pigeon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Roast the pigeons just enough to warm them through.

  2. Cut the meat from the bones and flour the bones well.

  3. Pound the bones in a mortar and stew them in 1½ pints of gravy.

Make the soup

  1. Add the butter, tarragon, chervil, onions, shallots, parsley, basil, turnips, carrots, and season with cayenne and mace.

  2. Boil slowly for 2 hours, then strain through a colander.

  3. Pulp through a tammy, then add the pigeon meat back into the saucepan.

  4. Let it simmer for 1 hour and serve.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Shallot + parsleytop 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
Provide the meat and bones that give the soup its main flavour and body.
Gravy
Serves as the cooking liquid that carries flavour from the bones into the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Turnips
Contribute sweetness and body as they soften during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and thicken the soup as they break down.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 2 hours. A slow, steady simmer extracts flavour from the bones and vegetables without clouding the broth. A hard boil can make the soup cloudy and greasy and can break down the solids too much.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, tarragon, chervil, shallot, parsley, basil):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, tarragon, chervil, shallot, parsley, basil. 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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