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Pigeons, Fricasseed, Brown

Pigeon fricassee simmered in a brown sauce of stock, claret, herbs, lemon rind, onions, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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, Fricasseed, Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Prepare the pigeons for boiling.

  2. Season the pigeons with pepper, salt, and mace.

  3. Heat the clarified butter in a stewpan and brown the pigeons all over.

  4. Remove the pigeons.

Stew

  1. Place the pigeons in a clean saucepan with seasoned stock and claret.

  2. Add parsley, thyme, lemon rind, onions, pepper, salt, and cayenne.

  3. Cover the saucepan and let the pigeons stew gently for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the pigeons.

  2. Thicken the sauce with brown thickening.

  3. Add mushrooms and lemon juice.

  4. Heat the pigeons in the sauce.

  5. Serve with gravy poured over them.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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 gentle stewing.
Clarified butter
Browns the pigeons and adds rich flavour to the dish.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the stewing liquid.
Brown thickening
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the pigeons.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the pigeons. Searing the pigeons in hot clarified butter creates browned, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale pigeons would give a flatter taste and a less appealing colour to the finished sauce.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, parsley, thyme, lemon, onion, mushroom. 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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