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Pigeons, Stewed, with Mushrooms
Pluck, draw, and singe two plump young house pigeons. Cut off their heads and necks, and truss them with the legs inwards, as if for boiling. Put the birds into a stewpan with half a pound of streaky bacon cut into small pieces, and an ounce of fresh butter, and turn them about until they are equally and lightly browned, then take them up, drain them, and mix one ounce of fine flour smoothly with the butter in which they were fried. Moisten the roux with a pint of gravy or water, and a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, add a little pepper, salt, and cayenne, and stir the gravy over the fire until it boils, then strain it, and put it into a clean saucepan with the pigeons, the fried bacon, a bunch of parsley, a small sprig of thyme, and a dozen button onions. Simmer gently for half an hour, take out the herbs, add a dozen small mushrooms, and stew ten minutes longer. Serve the birds on a hot dish, with the gravy poured over them, and the bacon, onions, and mushrooms put with them. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A straightforward brown stew that works well with squab; the only real difficulties are the vanished pantry items and the fact that a pint here is an imperial pint.
- House pigeons means squab"House pigeons" are domestic birds raised in a loft or dovecote, sold today as squab at around 12-16 oz each. Wild wood pigeon is leaner, tougher and darker, and will want closer to an hour of gentle simmering rather than forty minutes.
- Buy them dressedPlucking, drawing and singeing assume a bird straight from the loft. Squab arrives oven-ready; you need only remove any pin feathers and truss with the legs turned inward against the breast so the birds hold their shape in the pan.
- Imperial pintThe pint of gravy or water is 20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 cups. Use a well-flavoured brown chicken or veal stock if you have it; plain water leans entirely on the bacon and ketchup for savour.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquid, not the sweet tomato sauce the word now suggests. Specialist brands still exist; failing that, a tablespoon of a mix of soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce gives a comparable salty-umami lift, though not the same mushroom depth.
- Season at the endHalf a pound of streaky bacon, plus salt in the ketchup and stock, is a great deal of salt for two birds. Brown the bacon and taste the strained gravy before adding any further salt.
- Strain the roux gravyThe instruction to boil, then strain, then start again in a clean pan is worth following. It catches flour lumps and stray bacon solids and gives a cleaner, glossier sauce.
- Mushrooms go in lastThe ten-minute window at the end is deliberate: button mushrooms added at the start will collapse and grey the gravy. Small whole ones held back keep their shape and release their liquor into the finished sauce.
- Yield and donenessTwo birds serve two generously or three modestly. Stewed squab is cooked through, not pink; the leg meat should pull easily from the bone at the end of the simmer.
- That price"Probable cost, 3s." is three shillings, a costing convention throughout Cassell's for the reader budgeting a dinner. It has no bearing on the method.
Pigeons were among the cheapest meats a well-run English house could produce for itself: a dovecote or loft supplied young birds through much of the year, and the squabs were taken before they flew, when the flesh was still tender. Cassell's, published in parts in the 1870s and aimed at ambitious middle-class households, gives many pigeon recipes for exactly that reason. The dish itself is a plain brown stew built on a roux, in the Anglo-French idiom that dominated Victorian cookery writing, and its signature note comes from mushroom ketchup, a bottled sauce of salted mushrooms and spice that was a standard store-cupboard flavouring long before tomato ketchup displaced the word. Its use alongside fresh button mushrooms here is characteristic: the bottle for depth, the fresh caps for texture.