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Squab Pie
Make a rich paste and line a deep earthenware dish with it. Cut about one pound of tender roast of veal into slices one-half inch thick first removing the bones, and place a layer of meat around the sides and on the bottom of the dish, Carefully pluck six squabs, cut off the head and feet, singe and draw them, wiping them with a wet towel; cut the livers and gizzards fine together with an equal quantity of fat salted pork or bacon, add to them an equal measure of fine breadcrumbs, one egg and a seasoning of salt and pepper, and use this forcemeat to stuff the squabs with. Lay them in a deep dish prepared as above and cover them with some slices of veal. Put over the fire in a fryingpan one dessertspoonful each of butter and flour, stir until brown and then mix in one and one-half breakfast cupfuls of boiling water and a seasoning of salt and pepper. When this sauce boils pour it into the pie, and cover with an upper crust of paste, wetting the edges to cause them to adhere; cut several slits in the upper crust and brush over with beaten egg. Bake the pie in a moderate oven for two hours, taking care that it does not burn. If the crust browns too quickly cover it with a buttered paper, and lessen the heat of the oven. The pie may be served either hot or cold as desired.
A pigeon pie built on cold roast veal, from a kitchen that had whole birds and leftover roasts on hand at all times. The work is in the birds and the forcemeat; the assembly is straightforward.
- Start with the vealThe recipe says "roast of veal", which may mean either a roasting joint or meat already roasted and sliced cold. Raw veal will release liquid and thin the gravy, so roasting and cooling the meat first is the safer reading.
- Squab, and where to find itSquab is a young domestic pigeon, four weeks old and never flown, sold dressed by game butchers and better poulterers at roughly 12–16 oz each. Buying them plucked and drawn removes most of the labour in the original; ask for the livers and gizzards to be kept, since the forcemeat depends on them.
- Archaic measuresA dessertspoonful is two teaspoons, so the roux is small — about 10 g butter to rather less flour, two teaspoons being nearer 5 g. A breakfast cupful is around 8 to 10 fl oz; one and a half of them means roughly 12 to 15 fl oz of boiling water, so the resulting gravy will be thin.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as about 350°F / 175°C, though the recipe gives no figure. Two hours at that heat suits whole stuffed birds under a lid of pastry; the buttered paper the recipe mentions is the period's version of a foil tent and should go on once the crust has taken colour.
- The deep earthenware dishA straight-sided pie dish or a deep stoneware casserole, not a shallow pie plate — six stuffed birds with veal above and below need real depth. Cast iron or a Dutch oven works, though it browns the crust faster.
- The forcemeatEqual parts chopped liver and gizzard, fat salt pork or bacon, and fresh breadcrumbs, bound with one egg for all six birds. Chop the gizzards very fine; they stay firm however long the pie bakes.
- Serving and yieldSix birds, one per person, with the veal as a substantial extra. Served cold it sets firmer, closer to a raised pie — carve it in wedges through the crust.
Pigeon pie was one of the reliable dishes of the English and American table well into the nineteenth century, when dovecotes and squab lofts still supplied birds cheaply and year-round. The name causes confusion: a Devonshire squab pie traditionally contains no pigeon at all, but mutton and apples, and the word is generally traced to squab meaning something short and plump, applied to nestling pigeons and then loosely to the pie itself. The grand hotel treatment ran to whole stuffed birds layered with roast veal in a rich crust, a dish designed to be carried to the table whole and to hold up equally well on the cold buffet.