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Goose and Small Birds Soup
Goose, mourning doves, quails, pigeons and small birds also make ideal soups, either cooked as above, if they have enough giblets, or done with rice, tame or wild, as follows: 3 POUNDS GAME BIRDS 3 QUARTS WATER I TABLESPOON SALT 1/2 GARLIC CLOVE, MINCED PEPPER 2 CARROTS, DICED I ONION, CHOPPED PULP OF 2 TOMATOES, WITHOUT SEEDS 1/2 CUP RICE Bring birds slowly to boiling point, add salt and skim. Simmer 21/2 hours, add remaining ingredients and simmer until done. Skim off fat. Serve with a piece of the meat in each soup plate.
A plain game stock built on whole birds, finished with rice and vegetables. The one thing worth adjusting is the timing, which is written for tough old birds and will punish tender ones.
- Match the simmer to the birdTwo and a half hours suits a mature wild goose or an old pigeon. Quail and doves are done in 40 to 50 minutes; beyond that the breast meat shreds and turns cottony, which matters because the recipe asks you to serve a piece of meat in each plate.
- Never let it boil after skimmingBring the birds up slowly, skim the grey scum off once at the boiling point, then hold the pot at a bare tremble. A rolling boil emulsifies goose fat into the broth and you will not get it back out with a spoon.
- Rice timingWhite rice needs about 18 to 20 minutes and should go in near the end. Wild rice, offered here as an alternative, wants 45 to 60 minutes, so add it with the carrots and onion rather than at the finish.
- Tomato pulpTwo tomatoes, peeled and seeded, gives roughly three quarters of a cup of pulp. A drained half-cup of canned chopped tomatoes is a fair substitute out of season.
- SaltA tablespoon in three quarts is on the light side for a stock of this size, and it is added early so it concentrates as the pot reduces. Salt at the start as directed, then correct at the end once the rice has absorbed liquid.
- Skim the fat cold if you canWild goose carries less fat than a farmed one but still enough to coat the mouth. Chilling the pot and lifting the solid cap is far more effective than skimming hot.
- Shot and pinfeathersBirds taken with a shotgun should be checked over before they go in the water. Pellets sink and hide in the rice at the bottom of the pot, where nobody is looking for them.
- Which birdsGoose, quail and pigeon are straightforward. Doves and other migratory species are regulated in the United States under federal and state law, with seasons and bag limits, and most small songbirds may not be taken at all; use only birds legally in hand.
- YieldThree pounds of birds in three quarts of water serves six to eight as a first course, with a portion of meat for each plate.
Soup was the traditional destination for game that had aged past roasting: old geese, birds shot up by the pattern of a shotgun, or a mixed bag too small and varied to cook any other way. The instruction to cook them "as above, if they have enough giblets" points back to the preceding recipe in the book and reflects a frugal habit that has largely disappeared from American kitchens, where giblets are now discarded rather than counted as an asset. The casual grouping of "small birds" belongs to an older sensibility, one that ate whatever came out of the field; in Europe that appetite ran to larks and thrushes well into the twentieth century, while in the United States the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 ended the commercial and casual taking of songbirds and put most of them permanently off the table. What survives in this recipe is the sound underlying technique: a slow, skimmed, unhurried pot that draws flavor out of lean muscle and bone, then stretches it with rice and a little garden vegetable.