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To Broil Pigeons
Pigeons may be broiled the same as chickens, only cover the breast with slices of bacon. When nearly done, remove the bacon, dredge with flour and baste with butter. They will be done in half an hour.
A barded broil written for a gridiron over coals, with the bacon doing the work of basting until the last few minutes. The method transfers to a modern broiler or grill, but the half hour does not.
- What bird to buyAsk for squab — a young domestic pigeon, usually 12-16 oz dressed, sold by better butchers and by mail. Doves and band-tailed pigeons are migratory game birds in the United States and may not be bought or sold; taking them requires a licence and an open season. Feral rock pigeons are not so protected but are not a market bird either.
- Split it first"The same as chickens" means spatchcocked: cut down the backbone, open the bird flat, and flatten the breastbone with the heel of your hand. A whole pigeon will not broil through evenly.
- The timing is the problemThirty minutes over heat leaves squab breast grey and livery. Squab is a dark-meated bird eaten pink: figure 8-12 minutes total on a hot grill or 6 inches under a broiler, turning once, to an internal breast temperature of about 135F, then rest 5 minutes. The legs can take a few minutes more than the breast.
- Bacon as bardingPigeon breast carries almost no fat, hence the bacon. Use thin slices and secure them with toothpicks so they do not curl off. Because the cooking time is now short, the bacon will not crisp — pull it after a few minutes, finish it separately in a pan, and serve it alongside.
- Dredge and basteThe flour-and-butter finish is a browning glaze, not a coating. Dust lightly through a sieve, spoon melted butter over, and give it 60-90 seconds close to the heat; flour left under a broiler longer than that scorches and tastes bitter.
- Fire and heatFor coals, wait until they are covered in grey ash and you can hold a hand 4 inches above for only two or three seconds. In a domestic oven use the broiler at its highest setting with the rack near the top.
- YieldOne squab per person as a main course, half a bird as a first course. Toast under the bird is the usual period accompaniment, though this recipe does not mention it.
Pigeon was standard Southern table meat well into the nineteenth century, and Housekeeping in Old Virginia (Marion Cabell Tyree, 1878) treats it as an everyday bird — hence the shrug of "the same as chickens." Domestic pigeons were kept in dovecotes for squab, the fledglings taken at about four weeks before they fly, when the flesh is still tender; wild birds, including the vast flocks of passenger pigeons that were netted and shot commercially before the species collapsed at the end of the century, supplemented the supply. The barding with bacon was applied to domestic pigeon as much as to wild: the whole eighteenth- and nineteenth-century vocabulary of larding, barding and basting exists because the birds and joints of the period carried far less fat than what a supermarket sells now.