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Pigeons, Stuffed with Chestnuts, and Roasted
Take a dozen sound chestnuts. Peel off the brown skin, throw them into boiling water, and let them remain for two minutes, then blanch them like almonds. Weigh them, and mix with every three ounces an equal weight of fat bacon, minced as finely as possible, an ounce of finely-grated bread-crumbs, and a little salt, cayenne, and grated nutmeg. Pound the mixture thoroughly, and moisten with beaten yolk of egg. Stuff two pigeons with this forcemeat, truss them firmly, cover their breasts with a slice of fat bacon and a vine-leaf, and roast them before a clear fire. Serve on a hot dish, with the bacon and vine-leaves over them, and send nicely-seasoned brown gravy to table in a tureen. Time to roast the pigeons, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for two persons.
A Victorian roast for two, written for a spit before an open fire. The chestnut-and-bacon forcemeat is the point of the dish; everything else is technique that translates easily to an oven.
- The hinge: peel the chestnuts twiceThe recipe wants both the hard outer shell and the bitter inner pellicle off. Score the shells, boil or roast briefly, and rub the skins away while the nuts are still hot — cooled chestnuts refuse to give up the pellicle and you will lose half the meat prising it off.
- "Blanch them like almonds"This means slipping off the inner skin after the two-minute scald, exactly as one does with almonds. It is not a separate cooking step.
- The proportionsEqual weights of chestnut and fat bacon, plus 1 oz breadcrumbs per 3 oz of chestnut. A dozen peeled chestnuts will come to something like 4–6 oz depending on size, so weigh them and match the bacon, allowing an ounce of crumbs to every three ounces, bound with one or two egg yolks. Any surplus can be rolled into balls and roasted alongside.
- Fat baconNot lean rashers. In period usage this generally means the fat part of cured bacon; unsmoked back fat or fatback is a workable modern substitute. If you use ordinary cured streaky the salt rises sharply — cut the added salt accordingly.
- PigeonsThe birds intended are young domestic pigeons, sold today as squab, about 12–16 oz each. Wood pigeon is leaner, tougher and usually smaller; if that is what you have, the roasting time and the whole approach change.
- Fire to oven"Before a clear fire" is high, dry radiant heat. The book gives no oven temperature; roughly 425–450F is the nearest modern approximation. Twenty minutes at that heat suits an unstuffed squab; a bird packed with raw pork forcemeat needs longer, and the stuffing should reach 165F even if the breast is served pink.
- The vine leafA bardings-and-leaf wrap keeps the breast from drying and perfumes it faintly. Use fresh leaves if you have a vine, or brined leaves from a Greek or Turkish grocer, rinsed well to remove the salt.
- Trussing matters hereA stuffed bird that is not tied firmly will split at the vent and lose its forcemeat into the pan. Truss with string and skewer the cavity closed.
- ServingTwo birds for two people, with the brown gravy sent to table separately in a tureen rather than poured over. Watercress and game chips were common accompaniments to roast birds of the period, though this recipe does not call for them.
Pigeons were a domestic staple long before they were a delicacy: English country houses kept dovecotes precisely so that young birds, fattened on the parents' crop milk, could be taken for the table. By the time Cassell's Dictionary appeared in the 1870s the dovecote was in decline, and the entry quotes a cost of two shillings and treats the bird as a dinner-party roast rather than a thrift dish. The chestnut forcemeat runs all through Victorian game cookery; breadcrumbs pounded to a paste appear equally in turkey, partridge and pheasant stuffings of the period. The vine leaf over the breast is a classical touch, generally traced to Roman and later French practice of barding small birds, and it survives today mainly in the roasting of quail.