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Roast Pigeon
two ounces Clean and truss two young pigeons, mince the livers, and mix with them two ounces of finely grated bread crumbs, of fresh butter, finely chopped onion, a teaspoon shredded parsley, a little salt, pepper, nutmeg. Fill birds with this forcemeat, fasten a slice of fat bacon over the breast of each, and roast. Make a sauce by mixing a little water with the gravy which drops from the birds, and boiling it with a little thickening; season it with pepper, salt and chopped parsley.
A compact Victorian-style roast that assumes you know how long a bird takes and what oven to use. The text has also lost a line in typesetting, so the ingredient list needs reading carefully.
- The stray "two ounces"The recipe opens with a floating "two ounces" and then reads "two ounces of finely grated bread crumbs, of fresh butter, finely chopped onion" with no quantity attached to the butter or the onion. Breadcrumbs are two ounces (about 55 g); the butter's measure has dropped out in typesetting, and the stray leading "two ounces" may well belong to it. Judge the onion by eye.
- What a pigeon is here"Young pigeons" means squab — a domestic bird of four weeks or so, 12-16 oz each, sold fresh or frozen by game butchers. Wood pigeon from a game dealer is a different, leaner, tougher proposition and will not roast the same way. One bird per person.
- Oven heatNone is given anywhere in the recipe. For small birds a hot oven, 425-450F, is a reasonable modern choice: high heat, short time, so the breast does not dry out while the legs cook.
- TimingSquab want roughly 15-20 minutes at that heat and are best served pink, around 135-140F in the breast. Cooked right through they turn dry and livery.
- The bacon bardThe "slice of fat bacon" is a barding fat, not a flavouring. Use a thin sheet of pork back fat or streaky bacon tied over the breast, and lift it off for the last five minutes so the skin colours.
- The liversSquab are often sold with the giblets tucked inside. If yours arrive cleaned, ask the butcher for the livers or substitute a couple of chicken livers, chopped fine. Note that a stuffing of raw liver will not reach a safe temperature in a bird taken out at 135-140F; sear or cook the liver before it goes in, or serve the forcemeat separately.
- "A little thickening"This means a spoonful of flour, or flour worked into butter, stirred into the pan juices with water and simmered until it loses the raw taste. Two or three minutes of boiling is enough.
- TrussingTie the legs together and the wings close to the body. On a bird this small an untrussed carcass splays open and the thin flank meat scorches before the breast is done.
Pigeon was the most domestic of game birds: from the medieval period into the nineteenth century, English and continental estates kept dovecotes precisely because squab supplied tender meat in the lean months when other young poultry was unavailable. By the time cookbooks like this one appeared — a genre often described as aimed at young women setting up house, usually with a servant or two in mind — pigeon had drifted from an everyday item towards something a new wife might serve when she wanted the table to look accomplished. The forcemeat here, breadcrumbs bound with butter and sharpened with the minced liver, nutmeg and parsley, is the standard English stuffing formula of the period, and the pan-drip gravy thickened with a little flour is the plainest of all Victorian sauces. American squab farming expanded considerably around the turn of the twentieth century.