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Pigeons Aux Petits Pois

Pigeons cooked with peas, bacon, parsley, green onions, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 41,516 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pigeons Aux Petits Pois

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the pigeons

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan and add bacon to brown slightly.

  2. Add pigeons and brown them a little on all sides.

  3. Stir in green peas, parsley, and green onions.

Make the sauce

  1. Sprinkle flour and moisten with stock, stirring well.

  2. When sauce is nearly consumed, add butter rolled in flour.

  3. Thicken sauce over the fire with beaten egg yolks and cream.

Serve

  1. Serve pigeons with sauce.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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
The main protein, browned first to develop savory flavor on the outside.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce gently when heated, adding richness and smoothness.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the sauce's texture when stirred in.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor; the flour-rolled butter thickens the sauce at the end.
Green peas
Add sweetness and fresh, vegetal flavor and color to the dish.

The step that matters

Thicken sauce over the fire with beaten egg yolks and cream.. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if the sauce boils they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat low and stir constantly.

Flavor stand-ins for the peas

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

  1. Almondbetter flavor fit
  2. Pistachiobetter flavor fit
  3. Chestnutbetter flavor fit
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, onion, flour, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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