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Pigeons, Fricasseed, Brown

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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.

  2. Season the pigeons with pepper, salt, and mace.

  3. Heat the clarified butter in a stewpan and brown the pigeons all over.

Stew

  1. Transfer the pigeons to a clean saucepan with seasoned stock and claret.

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

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

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the pigeons from the sauce.

  2. Thicken the sauce with brown thickening.

  3. Add mushrooms and lemon juice.

  4. Heat the pigeons in the sauce.

  5. Dish them and pour the gravy 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
Main protein; gentle stewing keeps the meat tender and moist.
Clarified butter
Fat for browning the pigeons, adding color and savory flavor.
Seasoned stock
Liquid base that forms the body of the sauce.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavor to the sauce.
Onions
Soften during stewing and add sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Brown thickening (in the method)
Thickens the sauce into a gravy that clings to the pigeons.

The step that matters

Browning the pigeons. Browning in hot clarified butter develops flavorful Maillard browning on the surface. Pale pigeons give a flatter, less savory sauce, and crowding the pan causes steaming instead.

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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