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Pigeons, Fricasseed, Brown

A pigeon fricassee simmered in a brown sauce of stock, claret, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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, Fricasseed, Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Prepare the pigeons for boiling and season with pepper, salt, and mace.

  2. In a stewpan, heat the clarified butter and brown the pigeons all over.

  3. Remove the pigeons and drain them well.

Stew and thicken

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the pigeons with seasoned stock and claret.

  2. Add parsley, thyme, lemon rind, onions, pepper, salt, and cayenne.

  3. Cover and let the pigeons stew gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove the pigeons and thicken the sauce with brown thickening.

  5. Stir in mushrooms and lemon juice until smooth.

Serve

  1. Heat the pigeons in the sauce, then serve with gravy poured over.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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 is browned and then stewed until tender.
Clarified butter
Browns the pigeons and adds rich flavour before stewing.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the stewing liquid.
Brown thickening
Thickens the sauce so it coats the pigeons.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the pigeons. Searing the birds in hot clarified butter until deeply browned builds colour and savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale pigeons give a dull, flat sauce, and drained, dry birds brown more evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, parsley, thyme, lemon, onion, mushroom):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, parsley, thyme, lemon, onion, mushroom. 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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