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PIGEONS (a la St. Menehould)
Mix an ounce of butter and flour smoothly together over a moderate fire. Add half a pint of milk, a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, two moderate-sized onions, a carrot, and a parsnip, all sliced, and a little salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg. Stir the sauce until it boils; then put in two plump young pigeons, trussed as if for boiling, and let them stew gently until they are done enough. Take them up, drain them, cover them with egg and bread-crumbs, and fry in hot fat until they are lightly coloured. Serve on a hot dish, with the sauce poured round them. Time, about half an hour to stew the pigeons. Probable cost, 2s. 4d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A two-stage dish: the birds are poached in a vegetable-scented white sauce, then crumbed and fried, with the strained sauce as their gravy. The half-hour stew assumes genuinely young birds.
- Get squab, not pigeon"Plump young pigeons" means squab — birds under about four weeks, 12 to 16 oz each, sold at good butchers and online game suppliers. An older wood pigeon will still be tough after thirty minutes and needs an hour or more of gentle braising.
- Half a pint of milkAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. With an ounce each of butter and flour that gives a fairly thick sauce, which is what you want: it must coat the birds while they poach and still be spoonable at the end.
- "A moderate fire"Medium-low on a modern burner. Cook the butter and flour together two or three minutes so the flour loses its raw taste, but do not let it colour — this is a white sauce.
- The pan mattersThe birds should sit snugly in the sauce; a wide pan leaves them half-exposed and the sauce will scorch as it reduces. Use a deep saucepan or small casserole and baste or turn the birds once during the stew.
- Strain and finish the sauceThe recipe does not say to strain, but the onion, carrot, parsnip and herbs are cut for flavour rather than as a garnish. Lift the birds out, strain the sauce through a sieve if you want a clean gravy, and reduce or slacken with a little milk to a pouring consistency before it goes round the dish.
- Dry before crumbing"Drain them" is doing real work. Sauce-slick skin will not hold egg and crumbs; pat the birds dry, let them cool for ten minutes, then egg and crumb them so the coating sets rather than slides.
- FryingFat at 350–375°F, deep enough to come well up the birds, or shallow-fry and turn. You are colouring an already-cooked bird, so two to three minutes is enough — longer dries the breast.
- DonenessSquab is traditionally served pink at the breast, but this recipe stews the birds through; the leg juices should run clear before you crumb them. Check at 25 minutes, as small birds overcook quickly.
- YieldTwo birds serve two generously or three modestly, as stated. The "probable cost, 2s. 4d." is a Victorian price index and no guide to anything today.
The name points to Sainte-Menehould in the Argonne, in Champagne, and to a method rather than a single dish: something is first cooked slowly until tender in a seasoned liquid, then coated with egg and breadcrumbs and browned in fat or under a grill. The town's most famous claim is pieds de porc à la Sainte-Menehould, pig's trotters simmered for many hours until the small bones soften, then crumbed and grilled — a preparation generally traced to the eighteenth century and still made there. French and English cooks applied the same treatment to other things, notably poultry and pigeons, and Cassell's includes it among its pigeon recipes. The double cooking suits them well, since the poaching keeps a lean bird moist and the crumb coating supplies the crispness that skin alone will not.