Why it works: Veal and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,784 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓
Pigeon Farci a l’eSTRAGON, or with Tarragon Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Prepare the pigeons like a fowl for stewing, with the legs turned in.
Stuff the crop of each pigeon with veal forcemeat and tie the skin closed.
Wrap strands of fat bacon around the breast of each pigeon.
Stew and serve
Stew the pigeons gently in good braise until very tender.
Carefully remove the pigeons, untruss them, and place them on a serving dish.
Pour hot tarragon sauce over the pigeons before serving.
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.
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Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,784 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Young pigeons
- Provide the main meat, which becomes very tender through slow stewing.
- Veal forcemeat
- Fills the crop, adding moisture and richness to the bird as it cooks.
- Fat bacon
- Wrapped around the breast, it bastes the lean meat with fat as it cooks.
- Good braise
- Liquid that stews the birds gently, keeping the meat moist and tender.
The step that matters
Stew the pigeons gently until very tender. Gentle, low-heat simmering lets tough connective tissue break down slowly. A hard boil toughens the meat and dries it out, so the birds should barely bubble.
“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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