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Pigeon Soup
Take half a dozen plump pigeons and roast them lightly. Pick off the best of the meat and lay it aside. Flour the bones well, and crush them in a mortar. Cut into small pieces a large carrot, an onion, an ounce of lean ham, and half a head of celery, and fry these in butter with a bay-leaf, a bunch of parsley, a small sprig of thyme, three cloves, and half a blade of mace. Stir these ingredients over the fire until they are brightly browned. Add the crushed bodies of the birds and one ounce of brown thickening-or, failing this, a lump of butter rolled in flour-and moisten the whole with a quart of stock or water. Bring the liquid to the boil, skim thoroughly, let it simmer gently for an hour, then strain the soup, and pulp the vegetables through a tamis. Pour the soup back into the pot, add the flesh of the pigeons, and pepper and salt if required. Skim it again, and serve very hot. Time, altogether, about three hours. Probable cost, 5s. 6d. Sufficient for eight or nine persons.
A classic brown game soup built on roasted carcasses rather than raw meat, which is where nearly all of its flavour comes from. The one thing to get right is the browning: the mirepoix and the crushed bones must be genuinely dark before liquid goes in, or the soup ends up thin and grey.
- The birdsSquab or wood pigeon from a game butcher; the recipe calls for six. "Roast lightly" is not defined in the original, so judge by eye: enough to set and colour the flesh without cooking it through, since the meat is returned to the hot soup at the end.
- Crushing the bonesFlouring the carcasses helps them brown and thickens the broth. A mortar is the period tool; a heavy cleaver on a board, or short pulses in a sturdy food processor, does much the same job. Chop small to help extraction.
- Brown thickeningA dark roux, flour cooked in butter or dripping until nut-brown; some Victorian kitchens kept a quantity ready made. The recipe's own fallback, butter rolled in flour (beurre manie), is added here at the same stage, before the liquid, rather than whisked in at the end.
- Half a blade of maceMace is the outer casing of nutmeg, sold as blades or ground. Half a blade is roughly a pinch of the ground spice, and it is easy to overdo.
- TamisA tamis is a drum sieve of woven horsehair or fine mesh. A fine-mesh conical strainer with a ladle, or a blender followed by straining, gives the same smooth pulp. Do not push the bones or spices through.
- LiquidA quart of stock for eight or nine servings is very short measure by modern portions, even allowing for the small Victorian soup cup. Reckon on three pints to two quarts if you want proper bowls, and use a light brown chicken or veal stock rather than water.
- Finishing the meatThe reserved breast meat should be sliced or diced and added only at the last moment, off a hard boil. Pigeon breast is lean and turns dry and livery if it simmers.
- Time and yieldThree hours overall is plausible: prep and roasting, an hour's simmer, and time to strain and pass the vegetables. The recipe gives eight or nine servings, which suits a first course.
Pigeon was one of the cheapest meats in Britain for centuries, since a dovecote or pigeon-house fed itself and supplied squabs through much of the year; by the time Cassell's dictionary was compiled, generally placed in the later nineteenth century, the birds were still a staple of the game stall. The recipe belongs to a whole family of Victorian "essence" soups in which a roasted bird is stripped, its frame pounded and simmered to extract every trace of flavour, and only the best of the meat returned to the finished bowl. The stated cost of 5s. 6d. is a reminder that this was not peasant food by then but a dish for a household with a cook, a mortar and a tamis. The technique itself is straight out of the French professional kitchen of the period, where mirepoix and bouquet garni were the standard foundation for any soup of game.