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Pigeon Pudding
Line a pudding-basin with a good suet or butter crust. Fill it with a pound of rump steak cut into neat pieces and nicely seasoned, and two or three pigeons divided into halves, and prepared as for a pie. Add the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, a small lump of butter, and a cupful of rather highly-seasoned gravy. Cover the pudding with pastry, tie it in a floured cloth, plunge it into boiling water, and let it boil quickly until done enough. Time to boil, two hours and a half. Probable cost, 4s., with pigeons at 9d. each. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A boiled suet pudding of the old English kind, with pigeon standing in for the more usual kidney. The method is straightforward; the variables are the birds and the steaming vessel.
- The birdsFarmed squab (young pigeon, about 12 oz each) is tender and will be done well within the time. Wild wood pigeon is much leaner and tougher; halved and boiled it can still be sinewy at two and a half hours, so allow three, or use the breasts only and add the legs to the gravy. "Prepared as for a pie" presumably means plucked, drawn and singed, with feet and heads removed, before being divided into halves as the recipe directs.
- Rump steakVictorian butchery terms did not map neatly onto modern cuts, and a modern rump steak is on the lean side for a long boil. Chuck, skirt or shin cut into inch pieces is likely to give a better result.
- Suet crustThe standard proportion is 8 oz self-raising flour (or plain flour with 2 tsp baking powder) to 4 oz shredded suet, a good pinch of salt and about 5 fl oz cold water. Roll two-thirds for the lining, keep one-third for the lid, and press the seam firmly or the gravy escapes.
- Basin sizeA pound of steak plus two or three split pigeons needs a 2½ to 3 pint (1.4–1.7 litre) basin, well buttered. Fill to within half an inch of the rim; the crust swells.
- Cloth or foilThe floured cloth tied over the top is the traditional seal, and it works, but a double layer of pleated parchment and foil tied with string is easier and keeps water out reliably. Either way the basin should not be fully submerged — water halfway up the side, lid on, is safer than the recipe's "plunge it into boiling water".
- Keep it topped upTwo and a half hours at a fast boil will take the pan well down. Have a kettle going and top up with boiling water; if the pan runs dry the basin cracks and the crust scorches.
- GravyTake the cupful as roughly 8–10 fl oz; the measure was not standardised. Make it strong and slightly over-seasoned, as the recipe directs, because the suet crust and the steam dilute it. A reduced pigeon or chicken stock, lightly thickened, suits the dish.
- Yield and costFive or six portions, as stated — and a substantial one each. The "4s." and "pigeons at 9d. each" are late-Victorian prices and are of historical interest only.
Boiled suet puddings filled with meat were a mainstay of English cooking from the eighteenth century onward, and the pigeon version sits alongside beefsteak-and-kidney and steak-and-oyster in books of this kind. Pigeons were cheap and constantly available: dovecotes had supplied English households for centuries, and by the time Cassell's was compiled squabs were sold in quantity in city markets. The hard-boiled egg yolks tucked among the meat are an older habit, common in raised and boiled meat pies well before this book, where they enrich the gravy and pad out a filling. The method itself is the point of interest: the long, fast boil in a floured cloth, a method largely displaced in the twentieth century by gentler steaming.