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Stewed Pigeons

A stew of pigeons braised with onion dressing, thyme, corned pork, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Stewed Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Clean and stuff the pigeons with onion dressing and thyme; do not sew them up.

Braise

  1. In a pot, fry the corned pork slices until they begin to brown and release fat.

  2. Place the pigeons around the pork in the pot and add enough hot water to partially cover them.

  3. Cover tightly and boil for about 1 hour until the pigeons are tender.

Brown and finish

  1. Remove some of the liquid and keep it aside; turn the pigeons to brown them nicely.

  2. Heat the reserved liquid and add it back to the pot along with extra thyme and pepper.

  3. Continue turning until the pigeons and gravy are nicely browned.

  4. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and serve it poured over the pigeons, garnished with parsley.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 through long, covered simmering.
Corned pork
Renders fat and flavour into the pot that seasons the cooking liquid and the birds.
Flour
Thickens the reserved cooking liquid into a gravy that coats the pigeons.
Onion dressing
Stuffed into the birds to add aromatic flavour as they cook.

The step that matters

Browning the pigeons after the covered boil. Once the birds are tender, turning them over moderate heat drives browning through the Maillard reaction, which adds colour and savoury flavour. Keep turning so they colour evenly without drying out.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, pork, pepper, flour, parsley. 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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