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Pigeons a LA Crapaudine

A pigeon dish prepared with salad oil, mushrooms, chives, parsley, bread crumbs, and served with Sauce Piquante.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Pigeons a LA Crapaudine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Cut the pigeons down the back to flatten them without separating.

  2. Use a meat chopper dipped in water to flatten the pigeons without breaking the bones.

  3. Drizzle the pigeons with fine salad oil.

Make the coating

  1. Mix chopped mushrooms, chives, salt, pepper, parsley, and bread crumbs.

  2. Coat the pigeons with the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Place them gently on a grill and cook until golden brown.

  2. Serve with Sauce Piquante.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mushroom + chivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
The main meat, which cooks through on the grill and is the centre of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Form a coating that crisps and browns on the grill.
Fine salad oil
Fat that helps the pigeons brown evenly and keeps the surface from drying out.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savoury, earthy flavour to the coating.
Chives
Add a mild onion-like aroma and freshness to the coating.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, green aroma and light flavour to the coating.

The step that matters

Grilling the coated pigeons. Bread crumbs brown quickly and can scorch before the thick meat cooks through, so the pigeons should be placed gently and watched closely until golden brown.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Chivethe original

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