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Braised Pigeons with Mushrooms

Braised pigeons with mushrooms simmered 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. Lay the stuffed pigeons on the bed of vegetables.

Braise

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

  2. Remove the pigeons and keep them hot.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Rub 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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and rich during slow braising.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb juices from the stuffing, keeping the filling moist and light.
Fat pork
Adds fat that melts into the filling, enriching flavor and keeping it moist.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and body to the gravy.
Brown roux
Thickens the gravy, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Stock
Provides the braising liquid that gently cooks the birds and forms the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking gently for one hour. Pigeon meat is dense and lean, so it needs low, slow simmering with the lid on to break down connective tissue and become tender. Boiling hard would toughen the meat and dry it out.

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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