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Pigeons, Stewed, with Green Peas
Pluck, draw, and singe two plump young pigeons. Cut off the heads and necks, put the livers back into the inside, truss securely, as if for boiling, and tie the pigeons with twine instead of skewering them. Cut half a pound of streaky bacon into small pieces, and put these into a stewpan with the pigeons and one ounce of butter. Place them on a moderate fire, and move them about until they are equally and lightly browned all over. Take the birds up, drain them, make a roux by mixing an ounce of flour smoothly with the fat in the saucepan, moisten with a pint of stock, and stir the gravy over the fire until it boils. Strain it, and put it into a clean stewpan with the pigeons, the bacon, a bunch of parsley, a small sprig of thyme, and a pint of freshly-gathered shelled green peas, and a little pepper and salt if required. Simmer gently till the peas are done, take out the herbs, and place the pigeons on a hot dish with the gravy poured over them and the peas and bacon round them. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A straightforward braise that depends almost entirely on the age of the birds and the moment the peas go in. Everything else is a simple brown roux gravy.
- The birds"Plump young pigeons" means squab — birds of about four weeks, roughly 12-16 oz each, sold oven-ready by game butchers and some online suppliers. Older wood pigeon or racing birds will not become tender in the time given here; they need long braising or breasting-out.
- Plucking and drawingAnything you buy today will arrive plucked and drawn, so skip the first sentence. If the livers come in a bag with the bird, tucking them back inside the cavity is worth doing: they season the gravy from within.
- Streaky baconBritish streaky bacon is what Americans call bacon — belly cut, and sold both green (unsmoked) and smoked. Half a pound to two small birds is a lot of salt; taste before adding any, which is why the recipe says "if required." Unsmoked pancetta or lardons are the closest match.
- A moderate fireMedium heat on the hob. The browning stage is for colour on the birds and rendering fat from the bacon, not for cooking them through; five to eight minutes of turning is enough.
- The rouxOne ounce of flour to the ounce of butter plus rendered bacon fat gives a thin gravy once slackened with a pint (20 fl oz UK, about 2.5 cups) of stock. Let it cook a minute before moistening or the sauce tastes pasty. Straining it, as instructed, removes any flour lumps and stray bacon crumb.
- Peas and timing"Simmer gently till the peas are done" assumes garden peas picked that morning, which take ten to fifteen minutes. Squab need roughly 25-35 minutes at a bare simmer to become tender. Give the birds a head start in the strained gravy and add the peas for the last stretch, or use frozen peas in the final five minutes.
- TrussingThe recipe specifies twine rather than skewers. The birds are lifted out to drain and then returned to the pan, and twine is gentler on the skin than metal. Tie the legs to the body so the birds hold shape in the stewpan.
- YieldTwo or three servings, as stated: half a pigeon each if you serve three, which is thin unless there is bread and something before it. The "probable cost, 3s." is a Victorian retail note and no guide to anything now.
Pigeons with green peas is one of the fixed pairings of English and French cookery, appearing in household books from the eighteenth century onward and surviving into the Victorian era largely unchanged. Both elements were seasonal: young pigeons were most plentiful in spring and early summer, which is also when the first shelled peas came in — hence the insistence on "freshly-gathered" ones. The method here is the standard French braise cut down for a small English household, with the bacon doing the double work of larding lean birds and salting the gravy. Cassell's, compiled for a middle-class readership in the 1870s and reissued for decades after, treats pigeon as an ordinary bird rather than game. The habit of returning the liver to the carcass rather than discarding it belongs to the same thrift, and to the older practice of cooking small birds undrawn. Squab remains a delicacy in French and Chinese cooking today, but as a luxury rather than the spring stopgap it was here.