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Young Pigeons Stuffed and Braised
Clean, stuff and truss six young pigeons. Arrange them in a stew pan or Dutch oven. Add one quart boiling water; add three blades celery, cut in pieces, and three slices of onion, a small bit of bay leaf and one-half teaspoon peppercorns. Cover closely and simmer (in the oven if Dutch oven is used) slowly, until birds are tender (about two hours according to age of birds). Remove from casserole, cool and spread with soft butter. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and dredge with flour. Strain liquor from casserole. Try out fat salt pork in vessel, and brown birds richly in the pork fat, turning often that they may be evenly browned. Make a sauce of the strained stock. Make shallow, boat-shape croutons of stale bread, fry them a golden brown in deep hot Cottolene, drain on brown paper and arrange a bird in each boat. Garnish with parsley.
A two-stage bird: a long gentle braise, then a hard fry in pork fat for color. The recipe assumes farm pigeons of uncertain age, which is where most of the adjustment lies.
- Squab is not a two-hour birdMarket squab today is slaughtered at about four weeks and is tender throughout. Simmered two hours it shreds and dries out; 30 to 45 minutes at a bare simmer is enough, and the breast should still be pink at the bone. The original time is aimed at older, tougher birds.
- "Casserole" means the panThe text switches between "stew pan," "Dutch oven" and "casserole" for the same vessel. In this period "casserole" commonly meant a lidded stewing pot rather than a shallow baked dish. Any heavy pot with a tight lid works; if you braise in the oven, a low oven of around 300F will hold a simmer without boiling.
- CottoleneA branded cottonseed-oil shortening, heavily advertised in cookbooks of this period and long discontinued. Use any neutral oil or shortening with a high smoke point for the croutons.
- Fat salt porkUnsmoked cured pork belly or fatback, rinsed and diced. Render it slowly until the fat runs and the scraps are gold, then lift the scraps out before browning the birds or they will burn. Blanched bacon is the nearest substitute but brings smoke the dish does not want.
- The stuffing is left to youThe recipe says only "stuff," and names no ingredients. A plain bread stuffing (soft crumbs, butter, onion, salt, pepper) suits the dish. Keep it loose and light, and use only a couple of tablespoons per bird — a squab cavity is small, and a packed stuffing slows the braise.
- Chilling before browning"Remove from casserole, cool" is not filler. A hot, moist braised bird tears and steams instead of browning. Let them cool until firm, dry the skin, then butter, season and dredge with flour.
- The sauceStrain the braising liquid, skim the fat, and reduce it hard: a quart of water with a few slices of onion and three blades of celery gives thin stock. Thicken with a butter-and-flour roux, about 2 tablespoons of each per cup, and correct the salt only at the end.
- CroutonsCut thick slices of stale firm bread, hollow them slightly into boat shapes, and fry to golden. Drain on paper towel rather than brown paper. They should be sturdy enough to hold a bird and its sauce without collapsing.
- YieldSix birds, one per person. If served as part of a larger Sunday dinner in the style of this book, three birds split lengthwise will stretch to six plates.
Pigeon was ordinary American eating well into the twentieth century, raised in backyard lofts and dovecotes as a reliable source of small meat between the spring chicken and the autumn game season. The two-stage method here, braise then brown, looks like a domestic borrowing from French practice, where a tough bird is first made tender in liquid and then given the color it never gets in a covered pot; the bread "boats" are one way of serving a small bird whole with its sauce. The Cottolene in the frying instruction is a period tell: 52 Sunday Dinners was published by the makers of that cottonseed shortening, and the brand appears throughout the book wherever fat is called for. Note also that the pigeon on offer here is the domestic squab; the passenger pigeon, netted by the barrel for city markets a generation earlier, was effectively gone from the wild by the time this book was printed.