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Stewed Pigeons

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Pigeons

Ingredients

Directions

Stew

  1. Place the cleaned and stuffed pigeons in a deep pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Stew gently for 1 hour or until tender when tested with a fork.

Make the gravy

  1. Season with pepper, salt, mace, marjoram, and butter.

  2. Simmer for 5 more minutes.

  3. Stir in the browned flour and let it boil once.

Serve

  1. Remove the pigeons.

  2. Serve with hot 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. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + marjoramtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together767 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Marjoram + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together883 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the gravy.
Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through gentle, long stewing.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 1 hour. Gentle heat lets the connective tissue in the pigeons break down slowly, so the meat becomes tender. A hard boil toughens and dries the meat, so keep the liquid at a low simmer until a fork goes in easily.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, marjoram, butter, flour, pork. 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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