Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Potted Pigeons
Potted Pigeons
Boil the livers and gizzards of some pigeons until tender, drain and chop them fine, make them into a forcemeat with grated ham, breadcrumbs, the yolk of a hardboiled egg, and a seasoning of herbs. Stuff the pigeons with the forcemeat, put them into a stewpan with an onion, one-half pint of white wine, and the liquor in which the gizzards were stewed, add one ounce of butter that has been kneaded with a tablespoonful of flour, and cook slowly till tender. When cooked pack the pigeons in suitable pots; strain their cooking liquor, return it to the saucepan and boil quickly for a few minutes; then pour a little of it over the birds to level up, and when cold, cover the contents with warmed clarified butter.
The braise itself is straightforward period cookery, but the finish — packing the cooked birds into pots and sealing them under clarified butter for keeping — is the part that no longer stands. The notes below explain the terms and the hazard.
- Why the potting failsSealing cooked poultry under a butter cap creates exactly the low-acid, oxygen-free environment in which Clostridium botulinum spores germinate and produce toxin. The spores survive the gentle stewing described here, and the recipe gives no cure, no acidity, no measured processing temperature and no storage instruction. Potted meats were a recognised source of botulism outbreaks once the organism was identified in the early twentieth century.
- The added liquor makes it worsePouring strained cooking stock over the birds to "level up" puts a moist, protein-rich, near-neutral medium under the seal. Butter is not a barrier to bacterial growth; it only excludes air, which is the wrong thing to exclude. If you want potted birds, follow a current recipe with specified refrigeration and a short use-by window.
- Pigeon means squabThe birds intended here would most likely have been young domestic pigeons, roughly three-quarters to one pound dressed. Farmed squab is still sold, usually frozen, and one bird is a portion. Wild pigeons taken by shooting are a different, tougher proposition and in many places a licensed one.
- Livers and gizzardsSquab is rarely sold with giblets today. Chicken livers and gizzards substitute directly, but the gizzards need long simmering to become tender while livers need only minutes — cook them separately or the livers turn granular.
- ForcemeatHere it means a bound stuffing, not a sausage farce: chopped offal, grated ham, breadcrumbs and hard-boiled yolk. The yolk and crumbs are the binder, so the mixture should hold together when pressed, not pour.
- Half a pint of white wineBy American measure that is one cup. The recipe specifies only 'a seasoning of herbs' and leaves the choice to the cook.
- Kneaded butterOne ounce of butter worked with a tablespoon of flour is beurre manié, two tablespoons butter to one of flour. It is whisked in to thicken without a separate roux, and it must not be added to a hard boil or it will break into lumps.
- StewpanA straight-sided pan with a lid, deeper than a sauté pan; a modern braiser or a deep sauté pan will serve. The birds should sit in one layer with the liquid coming partway up, not be submerged.
Potting was the English larder's answer to the absence of refrigeration: meat or fish was cooked down, packed tight into an earthenware pot and sealed with a layer of clarified butter, which set hard and kept air off. Pigeons were a natural candidate, being small, plentiful and cheap, and dovecotes were a common feature of larger properties, though their use was already in decline by the nineteenth century. By the time Oscar Tschirky was running the Waldorf's dining rooms at the turn of the twentieth century, a cold pot of birds under a smooth butter seal is likely to have read as an old-English delicacy on a sideboard rather than as winter insurance. Much of The Cook Book is compiled rather than invented, and this entry has the phrasing of the English housekeeping tradition, though no particular source for it is identified.