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Pigeons, Roast
Pluck, singe, and draw a couple of young pigeons, and truss them firmly. Mince the livers, and mix with them two ounces of finely-grated bread-crumbs, two ounces of fresh butter, or, if preferred, finely-shredded beef suet, a shallot finely minced, a tea-spoonful of shredded parsley, and a little salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg. Fill the birds with this forcemeat, fasten a slice of fat bacon over the breast of each, and roast before a clear fire. Make a sauce by mixing a little water with the gravy which drops from the birds, and boiling it with a little thickening; season it with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley. Pigeons are sometimes served on toast, and brown gravy and bread sauce sent to table with them. Time to roast, twenty to twenty-five minutes. Probable cost of pigeons, 9d. to 1s. 9d. each. Sufficient for two persons.
A straightforward spit-roast for young birds, easily adapted to an oven provided the heat is high and the time short. The main adjustment is sourcing: what the book calls a young pigeon is sold today as squab.
- The birds"Young pigeons" means squab, a bird of roughly four weeks, sold at around 12-16 oz by game butchers and online suppliers. Wood pigeon, the bird more commonly on sale in Britain, is tougher and darker and is likely to be leathery if roasted this fast; it suits braising or breast-only cooking.
- Roasting before a fireAn oven at 425-450F stands in for a clear fire. Put the birds on a rack over a tray so the fat and juices drop clear, and give them the same twenty to twenty-five minutes.
- DonenessSquab is a red-meat bird and is traditionally served pink, around 135F in the thickest part of the breast, then rested ten minutes. Roasted to the 165F a chicken needs, it turns dry and livery.
- The stuffingForcemeat packed into a bird that only roasts twenty minutes will not get properly hot, and it contains raw liver. Either bake it separately in a small dish until firm and cooked through, or use it as a stuffing and accept that the birds will need longer, at the cost of the breast meat.
- BardingThe "slice of fat bacon" over the breast is a bard, not a flavouring. Streaky bacon or, better, a thin sheet of pork back fat tied on will do it; remove it for the last five minutes if you want colour on the skin.
- Weights and the shallotTwo ounces of breadcrumbs is roughly a cup of fresh crumbs; two ounces of butter is half a stick. One shallot for two birds is modest by modern taste and can be doubled.
- "A little thickening"This means beurre manie or a flour-and-water slurry, whisked into the pan juices let down with water and simmered a couple of minutes to lose the raw flour taste. A teaspoon of flour is plenty for the small amount of gravy two birds yield.
- Yield and costOne bird per person, as stated. The prices in pence and shillings are Victorian retail and are useful only as a reminder that pigeon was then a comparatively cheap meat; squab today is not.
Pigeons were a domestic crop long before they were a delicacy. Manorial and farmhouse dovecotes in Britain and across Europe kept birds that fed themselves in the fields and supplied squabs through much of the year, which is why pigeon appears so often, and so cheaply, in nineteenth-century household books. Cassell's gives a price range of ninepence to one and ninepence. The liver forcemeat here follows a much older principle of small game and poultry cookery: the giblets go back into the bird rather than being wasted, and the fat bacon over the breast compensates for a carcass with almost no fat of its own. Serving on toast, mentioned almost in passing, recalls an older manner often said to lie behind the practice, the bread set beneath the bird on the spit or in the pan to catch the drippings, though that is a general tradition for small birds rather than anything the page itself establishes.