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Pigeons with Olives

A pigeon stew cooked with olives and Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pigeons with Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Divide each pigeon into quarters.

  2. Fry the pigeon quarters in the butter or fat until browned.

Braise

  1. Have the Espagnole sauce ready in a stewpan.

  2. Add the browned pigeon quarters to the sauce.

  3. Cover closely and cook gently for about 40 minutes, or until tender.

  4. Braise or stew the olives in a little good stock.

Serve

  1. Serve the pigeons on a hot dish, with the sauce strained over and the olives grouped at the base.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 main meat, which becomes tender through gentle, covered cooking in the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Supplies the rich brown body and savoury flavour of the finished sauce.
Butter or good fat
Browns the pigeon quarters and adds richness and flavour to the meat.
French olives
Add a salty, briny note that contrasts with the rich meat and sauce.

The step that matters

Cook gently and covered until tender. Pigeon meat is firm and can toughen if cooked hard or fast. A gentle, covered simmer lets the connective tissue soften slowly while the meat stays moist, so the pieces become tender rather than dry or chewy.

“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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