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Stewed Pigeons

A stew of young pigeons cooked with bacon, butter, flour, stock, parsley, peas, sugar, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck and truss the pigeons with their legs inside.

Brown and make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, heat the bacon and butter over medium heat for 1 minute.

  2. Place the pigeons breast down and brown them evenly on all sides.

  3. Remove the pigeons and mix the flour with the bacon and butter, cooking it with a wooden spoon until well cooked.

  4. Gradually add the stock or water and the parsley, bringing the sauce to a boil.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the pigeons, green peas, sugar, and pepper, then simmer gently for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve the pigeons on a dish with the sauce and peas around them.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

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

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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 the gentle simmer.
Bacon
Renders fat for browning the pigeons and adds savoury, smoky flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Cooked in the fat, it thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, vegetable texture to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour with the bacon and butter. Flour must be cooked in the fat until it loses its raw, pasty taste before liquid is added. Stirring it constantly prevents lumps and scorching, and gives a smooth sauce with a clean flavour.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, sugar, pepper):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, sugar, pepper. 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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