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Potted Pigeons
Clean, stuff, and truss six pigeons, place upright in a stewpan, and add one quart boiling water in which celery has been cooked. Cover, and cook slowly three hours or until tender; or cook in oven in a covered earthen dish. Remove from water, cool slightly, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and brown entire surface in pork fat. Make a sauce with one-fourth cup, each, butter and flour cooked together and stock remaining in pan; there should be two cups. Place each bird on a slice of dry toast, and pour gravy over all. Garnish with parsley. 1 cup hot riced potatoes 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper ¼ teaspoon marjoram or summer savory Few drops union juice
A braise-then-brown method for small birds, with the stuffing ingredients printed as a bare list at the end. The trailing lines are the stuffing, not part of the gravy.
- The stuffing listThe final lines — 1 cup hot riced potatoses, salt, pepper, marjoram or summer savory, and a few drops of onion juice — are the stuffing called for in the first sentence. Mix them and fill the birds loosely before trussing.
- Two typesetting errors"14 teaspoon marjoram" is 1/4 teaspoon, and "union juice" is onion juice. Onion juice was made by halving an onion and scraping the cut face with the edge of a spoon; a fine grating works the same way.
- Three hours is far too longFarmed squab today run roughly 12-16 oz and are slaughtered at about four weeks; they are usually tender after 30 to 45 minutes of gentle braising, and three hours risks their collapsing off the bone before the browning step. The recipe's own "or until tender" allows for less, and the birds it assumed were probably older and tougher.
- Birds and sourcingBuy squab from a butcher or game supplier. Do not substitute wild pigeon taken locally: native pigeons and doves are regulated game or protected under migratory bird law in the US. The passenger pigeon that once glutted American markets is extinct.
- Oven optionThe recipe gives no temperature; "cook slowly" in a covered earthen dish is usually read today as a slow oven, somewhere around 300-325F. Keep the lid on so the celery broth does not reduce away; you need two cups left for the sauce.
- Pork fatFat rendered from salt pork or bacon. Lard works; a neutral oil browns the skin but loses the cured pork flavour that ties the dish together.
- YieldSix birds, one per person with its slice of toast. A squab is a modest portion, so plan on a substantial side.
Potting, in the older English sense, meant cooking meat slowly in a closed vessel until it could be kept under a seal of fat — but by the period this recipe comes from, "potted" had softened into little more than a synonym for a covered braise, which is what this recipe is. The celery cooking water is characteristic of the school's thrift — vegetable liquor was never poured away when it could be made into stock — and the slice of dry toast beneath each bird follows an older service convention.