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Broiled Pigeons in Papers
Clean the pigeons, put them into a saucepan with chopped bacon, a lump of butter and a little salt, pepper and grated nutmeg. Fry them slowly, and when half done, put in with them mushrooms, a minced shallot and sweet herbs. When nicely done, take them out and leave them to get cold. Then split the birds in halves lengthwise, sprinkle them over with pepper, salt and powdered sweet herbs and wrap each piece in buttered writing paper. Broil them over a clear slow fire for twenty minutes, turning to do them equally. Put the pieces of pigeons on a hot dish garnished round with slices of lemon and serve.
A two-stage dish: the birds are part-cooked in a pan with bacon and aromatics, cooled, then finished in paper over coals. The paper is the whole point — it holds the butter and herb crust against the meat instead of letting it drip into the fire.
- Use parchment, not writing paperThe paper of the period was plain rag stock, and cooks of the time used it buttered over coals as here. Modern paper may carry optical brighteners, clay coatings and inks. Substitute baking parchment, buttered on the inside face, folded and crimped so it seals.
- The birds"Pigeons" here means young domestic squab, roughly 12-16 oz each and sold dressed at butchers and by mail order. One bird per person, split in two, so the recipe as written suits however many you buy. Older wood pigeon is much tougher and will not come right in twenty minutes.
- A clear slow fireCharcoal burned down to grey ash with no flame, the grate set high — flame will simply burn through the paper. A moderate oven on a rack, turning once, is a workable indoor substitute, though it is not what the recipe describes.
- Watch total cooking timeThe birds are already half cooked before they go into the paper, so the full twenty minutes may take them past their best. Squab is often served pink in restaurant practice, though standard food-safety guidance for poultry is 165F; check with a thermometer rather than cooking on faith.
- Sweet herbsThe period shorthand for a mixture of thyme, marjoram, savory and parsley, sometimes with a little sage. Dry and crumble them fine for the second seasoning, since whole leaves inside the paper scorch.
- Chopped baconUse unsmoked streaky bacon or pancetta so it renders fat without dominating rather than a heavily smoked or sugar-cured modern bacon.
- ServingThe recipe has the pieces put onto a hot dish and garnished round with lemon; some cooks prefer to bring them to table still wrapped so each person opens the paper. The lemon at least gives acid against the butter and bacon fat.
Cooking en papillote — in a paper case — was a standard restaurant trick of the period, used for red mullet, veal cutlets and small birds alike, and it appears in French kitchen manuals well before Oscar Tschirky compiled this book in 1896. The point was economy of flavour: nothing escapes into the fire, and the paper browns rather than the meat. Pigeon was ordinary eating in nineteenth-century America, raised in lofts and sold cheap, and squab remained a fixture on hotel menus long after it disappeared from home kitchens. Oscar's book collects the working repertoire of the old Waldorf on Fifth Avenue.