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Stewed Pigeons
The pigeons must be seasoned with pepper, salt, cloves, mace and sweet herbs. Wrap the seasoning up in a piece of butter and put it in the pigeon. Then tie up the neck and vest and half roast the pigeons. Then put them in a stewpan with a quart of good gravy, a little white wine, some pickled mushrooms, a few peppercorns, three or four blades of mace, a bit of lemon peel, a bit of onion and a bunch of sweet herbs. Stew until done, then thicken with butter and yolks of eggs. Garnish with lemon.
A two-stage bird dish: the pigeons are part-roasted with a seasoned butter inside, then finished in a rich gravy that is thickened at the last minute with egg yolks. That final thickening is where the dish is won or lost.
- The hinge: the egg-yolk liaisonBeat the yolks with a little of the hot cooking liquid, pull the pan off the heat, then stir the mixture in and let it thicken below a simmer. If the sauce boils after the yolks go in it will curdle into a grainy scramble and cannot be brought back.
- Pigeon means squabPigeon -- the recipe does not say what size or age of bird. A half-roast-then-short-stew method suits a young, tender bird, i.e. what is sold today as squab; order from a butcher or game supplier. Older birds are much tougher and need far longer stewing. Small Cornish hens are the closest common substitute in size, though not in flavour.
- "Neck and vest"Almost certainly a printer's slip for vent — the tail opening. The point is to truss both ends so the seasoned butter stays inside the bird while it roasts.
- Half roastThe recipe gives no oven setting or time. A hot oven for a short spell, only long enough to set and colour the skin, is what is wanted. The stewpan finishes the cooking, so undershoot here rather than over.
- A quart of good gravyThis means a well-reduced brown stock, not flour-thickened pan gravy. Use 4 cups of strong veal or chicken stock; if it is thin, reduce it by a third first, since the recipe relies on the stock's own body plus butter and yolks for texture.
- Pickled mushroomsThe Victorian article was small button mushrooms in spiced vinegar, sharper and saltier than modern jarred marinated mushrooms in oil. A quarter-cup of drained pickled mushrooms plus a teaspoon of their brine gets close to the intended acidity.
- Mace and sweet herbsBlades vary in size, so 'three or four blades' converts to somewhere between a half and a full teaspoon of ground mace; blades give a cleaner flavour and can be fished out. 'Sweet herbs' covered a variable mix in period usage — a tied bundle of parsley and thyme with a bay leaf answers, removed before the yolks go in.
- Stewing time and donenessThe recipe says only 'stew until done'. A young bird wants roughly 20-30 minutes at a bare simmer after the part-roast; longer stewing dries the breast out even in liquid.
- YieldThe recipe does not say how many birds; allow one per person. Serve with something to catch the sauce — plain rice, toast, or boiled potatoes.
Stewed pigeon belongs to an English cookery tradition that came to Virginia intact: the seasoned butter stuffed inside the bird, the mace and lemon peel, the quart of gravy finished with yolks all appear in eighteenth-century English receipt books, and Marion Cabell Tyree's Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878) collected many such dishes from contributors who were still cooking from family manuscripts. Pigeons were a practical everyday bird rather than a delicacy — kept in dovecotes for centuries, and in the American South supplemented by wild birds shot in season, including the passenger pigeon that market hunting drove to extinction within a few decades of this book's publication. The egg-and-butter thickening is an older technique than the flour roux that came to dominate American sauce-making, and its survival here is a good marker of how conservative Virginia household cookery remained.