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Pigeons Stewed

A stew of pigeons cooked with butter, browned flour, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pigeons Stewed

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dress and stuff the pigeons as for roasting.

Stew and finish

  1. Place them in a stewpan breast down and cover with water.

  2. When nearly tender, add ½ cup of butter.

  3. Thicken the gravy with 2 to 3 teaspoons of browned flour mixed with a little cold water.

  4. If desired, fry the pigeons in pork dripping until browned.

  5. Arrange on a platter and pour the gravy over.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 slow stewing in water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the gravy a smoother, rounder flavour.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with browned flour mixed in cold water. Flour must be blended smoothly into cold liquid before it goes into the hot gravy; added dry or to hot liquid it clumps and stays lumpy, while a smooth slurry thickens evenly.

“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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