Home › The Principles of Cookery › PIGEONS, STEWED (another way) (Make a stuffing with pigeons')
PIGEONS, STEWED (another way) (Make a stuffing with pigeons')
Make a stuffing with pigeons' livers parboiled and bruised in a mortar, add bread-crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, pounded cloves, parsley, sweet herbs chopped small, and the yolk of an egg. Fill the birds with this stuffing, and tie them up at both ends. Half roast or fry them, then place them in good gravy or beef broth, along with an onion stuck with cloves, a bunch of sweet herbs, and a slice of lemon. Stew the pigeons very gently for about an hour, strain and skim off the fat, add pickled mushrooms, hard-yolk-of-egg balls and forcemeat balls. It is an improvement to lard the pigeons.
A Victorian braise that assumes a bird with its giblets still inside and a stockpot already on the go. The instructions are compressed rather than difficult; the main decisions left to the cook are quantities and how long the birds actually need.
- The hinge: gentle heat"Stew very gently" means a bare tremble, not a simmer. Pigeon breast is all dark muscle with almost no fat, and a rolling liquid squeezes it dry and stringy within minutes.
- An hour is for tough birdsFarmed squab, which is what a butcher usually sells today, is a month-old bird and will generally be done in about 25-35 minutes in the liquid after its initial browning. Reserve the full hour for older wild wood pigeon, which wants that long and will still be firm.
- LiversSquab are usually sold with the giblets removed, so ask for them or substitute chicken livers, allowing one per bird. "Parboiled" here means a minute or two in simmering water to firm them enough to pound smooth.
- Half roast or fryTreat this as a browning step rather than cooking through: a short spell in a hot oven, or a few minutes in butter in a pan, until the skin has colour.
- Tie them up at both endsPass string round the bird to close the neck cavity and again to bind the legs over the vent, so the stuffing stays put. A stitch with kitchen twine at either opening does the same job.
- Liquid, unspecifiedThe original gives no quantity. Use enough gravy or beef broth to come halfway up the birds, roughly 2 cups for four pigeons, and keep them covered.
- Egg-yolk balls and forcemeat ballsYolk balls are usually hard-boiled yolks bound with a little raw yolk, rolled small and poached in the liquid for a minute or two. Forcemeat balls can be made from the same seasoned bread-and-herb mixture as the stuffing, rolled and poached. Both are garnish; the dish works without them.
- LardingThe "improvement" is threading strips of pork fatback through the breast with a larding needle. Draping the birds with bacon or thin sheets of fatback before browning achieves most of the same effect.
- YieldOne bird per person as a main course, two if the pigeons are small wood pigeon.
Pigeon was long a cheap and readily available meat in Britain because it largely fed itself: dovecotes stood on manor farms, and squabs were taken from the nest before they had flown, which is why the flesh was tender enough to stew rather than only to make stock. By the 1870s the dovecote was in decline but poulterers still sold pigeons in quantity, and cookery books of the period carry several versions of the same braise under "another way". The elaborate finish is characteristic of the period's kitchen: the bird itself is plain, and the pickled mushrooms, forcemeat balls and yolk balls are there to make a garnished dish of it. Using the liver in the stuffing follows the general thrift of the household kitchen.