Skip to main content
Dessert

Pigeons a LA Crapaudine

Pigeons à la Crapaudine is a French dish of pigeons sautéed in butter with shallots, parsley, thyme, mushrooms, and bread crumbs, served with sauce piquante.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pigeons a LA Crapaudine

4 to 6 pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Split the pigeons and remove the breast, leg, thigh, and wing bones. Flatten the pigeons with a meat mallet.

  2. In a skillet, melt the butter with the shallot, parsley, thyme, mushrooms, pepper, and salt.

  3. Place the pigeons on a dish and pour the melted butter over them.

  4. Once the butter cools slightly, roll the pigeons in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a sauté pan with clarified butter and fry the pigeons until browned on one side, then turn and brown the other side.

  2. Drain excess butter on a cloth and serve the pigeons on a dish with sauce piquante in the center.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 is flattened so it cooks evenly and quickly.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and carries the herbs and aromatics into the meat.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns during frying and helps seal in juices.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the herb butter.
Shallot
Contributes mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the butter.

The step that matters

Fry the pigeons until browned on both sides. Browning through the crumb coating depends on enough hot clarified butter and steady heat. Too cool a pan leaves the coating pale and greasy, while too hot a pan can scorch it before the meat is cooked through.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, parsley, mushroom, pepper, bread, sauce):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, parsley, mushroom, pepper, bread, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes