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Pigeons, Fricassee Of
Cut the remains of some cold roast pigeons into neat joints, and stew them very gently in some good rich thickened gravy, nicely flavoured with onion, for about twenty minutes; then add twelve small button mushrooms, and serve in a border of mashed potatoes.
A short reheating dish built on leftovers, of the kind Victorian kitchens produced constantly. The whole thing depends on the gravy, which the original assumes you already have.
- "Good rich thickened gravy"In a Victorian kitchen this would most likely be an already-made and reduced brown sauce rather than thin pan juices. Allow roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups if you are working from the remains of two birds (the recipe gives no number); starting from scratch, a stock thickened with a brown roux and simmered until it coats a spoon is the closest equivalent.
- Bird substitutionSquab is sold whole and frozen at good butchers, but two boned quail or the leg and breast meat of one small chicken behave the same way in the sauce. The recipe is written for meat that is already cooked and cold.
- "Very gently" is the hingeCold roast game reheated at a simmer turns dry and stringy fast. Keep the sauce below a bare tremble, around 170-180F, and the twenty minutes will warm the joints through without tightening them further.
- Button mushroomsIn period usage these are small whole cultivated mushrooms, generally peeled; they were sometimes simmered separately in a little stock and lemon juice to keep them pale. Added raw at the end they will release water and thin the sauce, so cook them first.
- Onion flavouringThe gravy is flavoured with onion, not garnished with it. Simmer a halved onion or a few slices in the sauce and lift it out before the pigeon goes in.
- The potato borderStiff mashed potato piped or spooned into a ring on a hot dish, with the fricassee in the centre. It needs to be drier than mash served on its own or it will slump into the sauce; an egg yolk beaten into the potato helps it hold.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; working from the remains of two roast pigeons with about a cup of sauce, expect two servings as a light main course, or four as a small course in a longer meal.
Fricassee in English cookery books of this period means meat cut into joints and finished in a sauce rather than roasted, and by the late nineteenth century the word had drifted a long way from the pale, cream-thickened French original toward anything served in gravy. This entry belongs to the large class of Victorian "remains" or rechauffe recipes, printed because a middle-class household roasting birds for one meal was expected to account for every scrap at the next. The mashed-potato border is a standard serving convention of the era, doing the work that a rimmed bowl does today by holding a loose sauce in place on a flat dish.