Home › Poultry and Game › Pigeon and Mushroom Stew
Pigeon and Mushroom Stew
These birds if quite young are drawn, singed and roasted or broiled the same as chickens. Cut two pigeons into small portions and let them cook a short time in a tablespoon of butter in a stewpan, being careful not to brown them. Next add to the contents of the pan one pint of good thick stock or gravy, one tablespoon of mushroom catsup, and salt, pepper and cayenne to taste. Simmer for three-quarters of an hour, throw in a dozen or two of mushrooms, cook ten minutes more, and then stir in two tablespoons of cream. Add a little sherry if desired. Arrange the mushrooms around the pigeons on a hot platter and serve at once.
A straightforward brown stew that depends almost entirely on the quality of the stock. Two points need attention before anything else: the birds must not brown, and the stock must already be good, since nothing in the method builds flavour beyond the birds themselves.
- Sourcing the birdsBuy farmed squab (young domestic pigeon), sold whole at roughly 12-16 oz each, from a butcher or a game supplier. Mourning doves and native wild pigeons are migratory game birds regulated by federal and state law and may only be taken in season under licence; feral rock pigeons are generally not protected, but rules vary by state, so check before taking any wild bird.
- Mushroom catsupNot tomato ketchup. Mushroom catsup is a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, closer to Worcestershire or a mushroom soy; it is still made commercially in Britain. A tablespoon of mushroom soy sauce or a scant tablespoon of Worcestershire covers the same ground.
- Do not brownThe instruction is deliberate. This is meant to be a pale-bodied stew coloured only by the stock, and searing the cut pieces in butter will both darken the sauce and tighten the breast meat. Keep the pan at medium-low and cook the pieces four or five minutes just to firm them.
- Thick stock or gravyOne pint is 2 cups. "Good thick stock" means a reduced brown stock with enough body to coat a spoon, or a leftover roast gravy. Unthickened boxed stock will give you a watery result; reduce 3 cups down to 2, or slacken a light roux with it.
- Simmering timeForty-five minutes suits a bird jointed on the bone and gives the sauce time to take on the pigeon flavour. Squab breast is best served pink, so if you want it that way, add the breast pieces for only the final 10 to 15 minutes and let the legs and carcass carry the long simmer.
- A dozen or two of mushroomsCounted whole, so presumably small buttons; call it 6 to 12 oz. Ten minutes suits whole buttons; sliced modern cremini will be done in about five.
- Finishing with creamAdd the 2 tablespoons of cream off the boil and do not let the pan return to a hard bubble, or the sauce will separate against the acid in the catsup and sherry. The sherry, if used, should be dry (fino or amontillado) and needs a minute of simmering to lose its rawness.
- YieldTwo birds serve two generously or three modestly. Serve over toast, plain rice or mashed potato; the sauce is the point and needs something to sit on.
Pigeon was ordinary meat in nineteenth-century America, at least in the home kitchen, even as squab appeared on hotel and restaurant menus as a luxury: dovecotes were kept for the same reason as hen houses, and the young squab, taken before it flew, was reliably tender. The opening line treats a young pigeon as interchangeable with a chicken. What dates the dish most precisely is the mushroom catsup, one of a family of thin bottled extracts (walnut, oyster, mushroom) that Victorian and Edwardian cooks used the way a modern kitchen reaches for soy sauce or a stock concentrate. By the time The Butterick Cook Book appeared in 1911, the wild passenger pigeon that had once glutted American markets was effectively gone, and pigeon on a household menu meant a domestic bird from a breeder or a dealer, as it does today.