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Pigeon Cutlets
Having plucked and prepared the birds, put them in a stewpan with sufficient clear stock to cover, and boil slowly until tender. When cooked drain and cut them up into convenient pieces. Season some grated breadcrumbs with moderate quantities of finely-chopped thyme, parsley and lemon peel and a little cayenne pepper. Dip the pieces of pigeon in beaten egg and roll them in seasoned breadcrumbs, giving them a good coating. Put a large lump of lard or fat into a deep fryingpan, place it on the fire, and when the blue smoke arises put in the pieces of pigeon and fry them till nicely browned. Put one ounce of butter and a tablespoonful of flour into a stewpan, stir them over the fire till mixed and browned, then strain in the liquor in which the pigeons were boiled, season to taste, and stir till boiling. Form a pyramid of potatoes on a hot dish, arrange the pieces of pigeons in an upright position all round them, pour the sauce round the pigeons, and serve.
A two-stage treatment — poach, then crumb and fry — built for tough older birds and a hot coal range. Two adjustments carry most of the weight: the poaching time and reading the fat by sight.
- The birdsOrder farmed squab (young pigeon), sold at 12–16 oz dressed, from a butcher or online game supplier. Two birds serve two to three people with the potatoes; scale the poaching liquid to cover.
- Poaching time"Boil slowly until tender" assumed a mature bird that could take 45 minutes or more. Squab is tender at 20–25 minutes at a bare simmer, and past that the breast turns to string. Keep the liquid just trembling, never rolling.
- "When the blue smoke arises"This is a visual cue for hot fat. Lard's smoke point is usually put somewhere around 370F, so aim for about 365F on a thermometer; if the fat is smoking blue-grey in any volume it has gone past its point and will taste scorched.
- Fat choiceLard is a good answer here for flavour, though its smoke point is only moderate. Refined peanut oil or beef tallow works. The recipe says only "a large lump" in a deep pan; take it as enough to come halfway up the pieces, about an inch.
- Lemon peelGrated zest only, no white pith. It scorches quickly in the fat, so keep the pieces moving, and crumb the pieces close to frying time rather than letting seasoned crumbs stand.
- The sauceOne ounce butter to one tablespoon flour is a slightly fat-heavy roux; cook it to a nut brown, then whisk in the strained poaching liquor off the heat to avoid lumps. The stock will be thin and underseasoned — reduce it by a third before thickening, and finish with salt and a squeeze of lemon.
- The pyramid of potatoesThe recipe does not say which potato; duchesse or a firm mashed potato, moulded or piped into a cone on a warmed platter, answers the description, with the crumbed pieces stood against it. Modern serving: a mound of mash off-centre, pigeon leaning on it, sauce ribboned around rather than flooded over the crust.
- DonenessThe meat is already cooked through from the poach; the fry is only for colour. Two to three minutes is enough, and the pieces should go in dry-surfaced and freshly crumbed or the coating will slide.
Pigeon was ordinary meat in nineteenth-century American kitchens, and dovecotes and squab houses supplied city markets well into the twentieth century. "Cutlets" here is a borrowing from French menu language, where côtelette came to mean any small crumbed and fried portion regardless of whether a bone was involved. The poach-then-crumb method is frankly economical: it salvages birds too old to roast, and the poaching liquor becomes the sauce, so nothing is bought twice. Worth noting that the passenger pigeon, which had once glutted American markets, was effectively gone by the time this book appeared; the pigeon meant here was the domesticated squab that still fills the role today.