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Salmi of Pigeons

A stew of pigeons cooked with gravy, lemon, morels, catsup, browning, cayenne pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmi of Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pigeons into quarters and fry them until light brown.

Stew

  1. Place the fried pigeons in a stewpan with good gravy, lemon juice, morels, catsup, browning, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the pigeons and place them on a dish.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter, then pour it over the pigeons.

  5. Garnish with green pickles.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 main meat, which becomes tender during stewing.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, coating sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps carry flavour in the thickened gravy.
Morels
Add earthy, savoury aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the fat and liquid so it thickens smoothly rather than clumping. Lumps form when flour is added directly to hot liquid without being mixed with butter first.

“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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