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Four Pigeons Larded, and a Raggoo of CorkisCambs

A stew of four larded pigeons cooked with stock, onions, herbs, and spices.

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 ↓

Four Pigeons Larded, and a Raggoo of CorkisCambs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pigeons

  1. Remove the legs from the pigeons and fill them with farce.

  2. Lard the pigeons with bacon.

Stew

  1. Line the bottom of a stewpan with sheets of bacon.

  2. Add stock, onions, thyme, parsley, bay leaves, and mace to the stewpan.

  3. Place the pigeons in the stewpan and cover with bacon sheets.

  4. Simmer on the stove for 30 minutes, adding lighted charcoal on the cover.

Finish and serve

  1. Finish the pigeons as you would other lardings.

  2. Serve the ragoo on a dish and place the pigeons on top.

  3. Garnish with paste.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Thyme + macetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 during slow simmering.
Bacon sheets
Add fat and savoury flavour that bastes the birds as they cook.
Stock
Forms the moist cooking liquid that gently braises the pigeons.
Onions
Add sweetness and body to the sauce as they soften in the liquid.
Farce (filling)
Adds a moist, seasoned stuffing that flavours the birds from inside.

The step that matters

Simmer on the stove for 30 minutes. Gentle, steady simmering tenderises the pigeon meat without toughening it. Boiling hard would make the meat dry and stringy, so keep the liquid barely bubbling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, thyme, 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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