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Pigeons, Stuffed and Roasted
Pluck, draw, and singe two plump young pigeons, and fill them with a forcemeat made as follows. Mince the livers finely, and mix with them the same quantity of finely-sliced suet and grated bread-crumbs. Add a little pepper, salt, and pounded mace, a heaped table-spoonful of chopped parsley, and a pinch of powdered thyme, and moisten the whole with beaten yolk of egg. Truss the birds firmly, tie thin slices of bacon over the breasts, and put them down to a clear fire. To make the gravy, mix any which drops from the birds with half a cupful of boiling stock or water. Add a table-spoonful of claret, a little of the forcemeat, season with salt, cayenne, and grated nutmeg, and thicken the whole with the yolk of egg well beaten. Serve the birds on a hot dish, with the sauce poured round them, and a little bread sauce in a tureen. Time to roast the pigeons, from twenty to thirty minutes. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for two persons.
A straightforward roast that assumes an open fire, a butcher who sells birds with their livers still in them, and a cook who can thicken a sauce with egg yolk without curdling it. The last of those is the part that needs attention.
- The hinge: the egg-yolk gravyOnce the beaten yolk goes in, the sauce must not boil or it will scramble into threads. Take the pan off the heat, whisk a ladleful of the hot gravy into the yolk first, then return it and stir over the lowest possible heat until it coats a spoon.
- What to buy"Plump young pigeons" means squab — a young bird of about 12-16 oz, sold by game butchers and some online suppliers. Older wood pigeon is much leaner and tougher and will not roast well in 20-30 minutes; it wants braising instead. Ask for the livers to be kept, or substitute an equal weight of chicken livers.
- SuetBeef suet is still sold shredded in packets; the fresh kidney fat the book assumes is a butcher's order. Chilled and finely chopped is the aim in either case — it should melt through the forcemeat rather than sit in lumps.
- Down to a clear fireThis is roasting in front of glowing coals rather than in an oven. The book gives no oven setting; something in the region of 425F for 20-25 minutes is a reasonable modern approximation. Squab is now usually served with the breast still pink, and the recipe's upper limit of thirty minutes is about as far as it will go before drying out.
- MacePounded mace is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, sold ground. It is warmer and less sweet than nutmeg itself. About a quarter teaspoon suits two birds; blades of whole mace can be ground in a spice mill.
- The forcemeat in the sauceUse a spoonful of the cooked stuffing scooped from the birds after roasting, not the raw mixture. Mash it into the gravy to give body before the yolk goes in.
- ClaretAny dry red Bordeaux-style wine. A tablespoon is a seasoning rather than a base, so there is no need to open a bottle for it if you have leftover wine.
- Yield and accompanimentTwo birds serve two, as stated. Bread sauce — milk infused with onion and clove, thickened with crumbs — is the expected partner and is best made while the birds roast.
Pigeon was for centuries one of the cheapest meats an English household could put on a table, because it fed itself. Manorial and farm dovecotes kept birds that foraged in the surrounding fields, and squabs were taken from the nest at the point when they were fattest and had never flown. By the time Cassell's was compiled the great dovecotes were long in decline and pigeon had shifted from everyday fare toward the game section of the poulterer's shop. The treatment is thoroughly of its period: a liver-and-suet forcemeat that wastes nothing of the bird, bacon laid over the breast because pigeon carries almost no fat of its own, and a sauce bound with egg yolk rather than with flour.