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Pigeon Soup

A savory soup made from pigeons, stock, butter, flour, onions, carrots, turnips, parsley, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pigeon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Truss the pigeons as if for boiling.

  2. Season the pigeons inside with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Dust the pigeons with flour.

  4. Brown the pigeons in a saucepan with a little butter.

Make the soup

  1. Pour in the stock.

  2. Add the livers, gizzards, and vegetables.

  3. Simmer slowly for one hour.

  4. Remove the pigeons.

  5. Cut the meat from the breasts into small pieces.

  6. Bruise the bones.

  7. Return the bones to the soup.

  8. Boil for an additional half hour.

  9. Mix a little butter and flour with the livers.

  10. Stir this mixture into the soup to thicken it.

  11. Strain the soup.

  12. Return it to the saucepan with the pigeon pieces.

  13. Boil gently for ten minutes, skimming if necessary.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup very hot in a tureen.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons
Provide the meat for the soup, which is browned first and later cut into pieces.
Butter
Enriches the browning of the pigeons and, mixed with flour, thickens the soup.
Flour
Coats the pigeons for browning and, mixed with butter, thickens the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying flavour from the bones and meat.
Livers (in the method)
Add rich flavour and body to the soup when mashed into the thickening.

The step that matters

Stir the butter and flour mixture into the soup to thicken it. Flour must be cooked to lose its raw taste and to thicken evenly; adding it to hot liquid without first blending it with butter can form lumps that do not dissolve smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, turnip, parsley, 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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