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Pigeons a LA Crapaudine, and Piquant Sauce

Pigeons cooked in a butter, herb, and mushroom sauce, served with piquant sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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, and Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Spurr the pigeons at the belly and turn the breast over.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  3. Add chopped shallot, parsley, thyme, mushrooms, salt, and pepper to the melted butter.

  4. Place the pigeons on a dish, ensuring they are not too close together.

  5. Pour the butter mixture over the pigeons.

  6. When the butter begins to cool, roll the pigeons in bread crumbs.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the pigeons in a buttered sauté pan, cooking until the underside is brown.

  2. Once browned, lay the pigeons on a cloth to absorb excess butter.

  3. Arrange the pigeons around a serving dish with sauce 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 browns in butter to form a crisp, flavourful exterior.
Butter
Carries heat and flavour, browning the coating and keeping the meat moist.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust that browns in the pan and gives the pigeons a crisp texture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy aroma and savoury body to the buttery sauce.
Shallot
Adds a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the butter mixture.

The step that matters

Browning in the sauté pan. The bread-crumb coating needs enough hot, buttered surface to brown evenly. If the pan is too cool, the crumbs soak up butter and turn greasy instead of crisp; if too crowded, the birds steam rather than brown.

“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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