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Stewed Pigeons

A stew of pigeons browned in butter, simmered in stock with shallot, bay leaf, herbs, served with potato croquettes and fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the pigeons in half and sprinkle with flour, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Sauté in butter for 10 minutes or until well browned.

Stew and serve

  1. Pour over 1 ½ cups of good stock, add the shallot, bay leaf, and herbs.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the pigeons to a dish and strain the gravy over them.

  4. Garnish with potato croquettes and fried croutons.

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. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Shallot + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 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 during the long simmer in stock.
Flour
Coats the pigeon pieces so they brown well and help thicken the gravy.
Butter
Carries the browning in the pan, adding richness and roasted flavour to the meat.
Good stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy and carries the flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Sauté in butter until well browned. Browning creates deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale pigeon pieces make a flat-tasting gravy, so the surface needs real colour before the stock goes in.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, butter, shallot, bread):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, butter, shallot, 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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