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Broiled Pigeon
(Piccione in gratella) Take a young, but fat pigeon, divide it in two parts lengthwise and flatten' it well with the hands. Then put it to brown in oil for four or five minutes, just to harden the meat. Season when still hot with salt and pepper, then arrange it as follows.
Melt in the fire, without boiling it, a piece of butter and mix the liquid butter with one beaten egg. Dip the pigeon in the butter and egg and keep it until it absorbs them. Then sprinkle with bread crumbs ground fine. Cook on a grill on a a low fire and serve with a sauce or a side dish. 149
A spatchcocked squab, part-fried, coated in egg and butter with breadcrumbs, then finished slowly over coals. The whole thing hinges on the second cooking being gentle enough that the crumbs colour rather than burn.
- The bird"Young but fat pigeon" means squab: a domestic pigeon of about four weeks, sold at 12-16 oz and available from game butchers and online suppliers. Wild pigeon is leaner, tougher and darker, and will not behave the same way; a poussin is the closest common substitute.
- Splitting and flatteningDividing lengthwise means cutting through the backbone and breastbone to give two halves. Press firmly with the heel of the hand or the flat of a heavy pan until the joints give and the bird lies level, which is what makes even grilling possible.
- The oil stage is not cookingFour or five minutes in oil is meant only to set and firm the surface, as the text says. Use a hot pan, get colour on both sides, and stop there; the grill does the actual cooking.
- Melted, not hot, butter"Melt in the fire, without boiling" matters because butter above roughly 150F will begin to scramble the egg into threads. Melt it and let it cool to barely warm before beating the egg in, or the coating will not cling smoothly.
- A low fireEgg and breadcrumbs scorch long before a bird is done. Over charcoal, bank the coals to one side and cook the pigeon over the cooler zone, or set a gas grill to medium-low; under a domestic broiler, drop the rack to the lowest position. Reckon on 12-18 minutes, turning once.
- DonenessSquab is traditionally served with the breast pink, around 135F at the thickest point, and Italian and French practice still favours this. Cooking poultry to a pink centre carries the usual risk; if that is a concern in your household, cook to 165F and accept a drier bird.
- Yield and accompanimentOne split squab per person as a main, half as a second course in a longer meal. The recipe leaves 'a sauce or a side dish' unspecified; a sharp accompaniment suits the rich meat: salsa verde, a mustard or anchovy butter, or simply lemon and grilled vegetables.
Piccione in gratella belongs to a long Italian habit of eating pigeon that predates the poultry industry entirely: birds were kept in colombaie, the dovecotes still visible on Tuscan and Umbrian farmhouses, which supplied squab, manure and little labour. Because the young birds never fly, the meat is tender and uniformly dark, which is why a technique this direct works at all. The gratella is the grid iron set over embers, the standard piece of hearth equipment before ranges, and the egg-and-crumb armour here does the job of protecting a small lean bird from a fire the cook could not turn down. Pellegrino Artusi's widely circulated La scienza in cucina (1891) carries pigeon preparations of its own, and Italian-American cookbooks of the early twentieth century were written for an audience who would still have recognised pigeon as ordinary food rather than a restaurant luxury.