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To Stew Pigeons

A stew of pigeons cooked with cream, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

To Stew Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Ensure pigeons are fresh, cropped, drawn, and washed.

  2. Soak the pigeons in water.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and a small piece of mace.

Finish the stew

  1. Boil with cream and butter mixed with flour 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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 meat that forms the main body of the stew.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter sauce as its starch swells during boiling.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the stew.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the butter and cream before boiling. Flour clumps if it meets hot liquid unmixed. Blending it smoothly with the butter and cream first lets the starch disperse evenly, so boiling thickens the sauce without lumps.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cream, butter, 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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