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Braised Pigeons with Mushrooms

Braised pigeons stuffed with breadcrumbs and pork, cooked with vegetables and mushrooms in a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Pigeons with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain, wash, and stuff the pigeons with a mixture of breadcrumbs, chopped fat pork, onion juice, salt, and pepper.

  2. Prepare a bed of minced carrot, onion, celery, and parsley in a pot.

  3. Place the stuffed pigeons on the bed of vegetables.

Braise

  1. Add stock or the butter and water mixture, cover, and cook gently for one hour or until tender.

  2. Remove the pigeons and keep them warm.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain the gravy through a colander into a saucepan, season to taste.

  2. Add the chopped mushrooms and simmer for five minutes.

  3. Thicken the gravy with brown roux, bring to a boil, and pour over the pigeons.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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, covered braising.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb juices and fat in the stuffing, keeping it moist and giving it body.
Fat pork
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, keeping the meat moist as it cooks.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and savory depth to the gravy.
Brown roux
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Cook gently and cover the pot during braising. A gentle simmer with a lid breaks down connective tissue slowly and keeps the meat moist. A hard boil toughens the meat and reduces the stock too quickly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, carrot, celery, parsley, butter, mushroom):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, carrot, celery, parsley, butter, 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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