Pigeon Pie Recipe from my Grandmothers Kitchen

1 fine beef steak, pigeons and livers, parsley, 1/2 pint gravy, little butter, salt and pepper. If to be served hot use flaky pastry, if cold use short crust pastry.

Butter the dish and put pastry round the sides and edges. Place the steak on the bottom of the dish and season with salt and pepper. On top of this place the birds, rubbed inside and out with salt and pepper, and a piece of butter inside each one. Make sure that you put the breasts downwards to keep juicy. Add chopped livers and parsely. Pour on the gravy and cover with the pastry. Make a hole in the top. If you like (!) you can put one of the birds' feet, nicely cleaned, into the hole. Brush over with beaten yolk of egg and bake 1 1/2 hours.

Image: My Gran!

For more pie recipes from my Grandmother's kitchen see: Pastry Recipes for Pies from my Grandmother's Kitchen

You can find her pastry recipes here: Pie Recipes from my Grandmother's Kitchen

Have a look at the videos below for preparation of the birds and an alternative, and perhaps more contemporary way of preparing the pie. (Where does the gravy come from?)

Fox Run Marble Board

Mason Cash Mixing Bowl, 6-Quart

Gordon Ramsay by Royal Doulton White Porcelain 1-Quart Oval Pie Dish

Fox Run Marble Rolling Pin and Base

Antique Style Balance Scale
Black
(Black)
(7" H x 9.75" W x 4.25" D)

Pfaltzgraff Winterberry 9-1/2-Inch Perfect Pie Plate with Cardinal Pie Bird

Sing a Song of Sixpence

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn't that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?
The king was in his counting house,
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlour,
Eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes;
When down came a blackbird
And pecked off her nose.

In the 16th century it was considered amusing to put live birds in a pie, (a bit like my goldfish!). An Italian cookbook from 1549 (translated into English in 1598) contained a recipe: "to make pies so that birds may be alive in them and flie out when it is cut up," and this was referred to in a cook book of 1725 by John Nott. At the wedding of Marie de' Medici and Henry IV of France in 1600, "The first surprise, though, came shortly before the starter, when the guests sat down, unfolded their napkins and saw songbirds fly out".

Image: Illustration from Sing a Song for Sixpence (1880) by Randolph Caldecott (d. 1886)

Now, unless you have a very specific interest in pigeons or pigeon meat, you probably haven't given a great deal of thought to their history and housing, but it is a fascinating subject.

The Domestic Pigeon (Columba livia f. domestica) was derived from the Rock Pigeon, the world's oldest domesticated bird. Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets and Egyptian hieroglyphics show that pigeons were kept more than 5,000 years ago. Research suggests that domestication of pigeons was as early as ten thousand years ago.

Far from being a lowly meat, pigeon has been associated with la créme de la créme. In some cultures, particularly Medieval Europe,owning a dovecote was a symbol of status and power jealously guarded and regulated by law. Only nobles had this special privilege, known as droit de colombier, and many ancient manors in France and the United Kingdom have a dovecote. In Limousin, many ordinary farm houses still have their pigeonniers along with their rabbitries. Many painting show dovecotes, like the one by Pieter Breughel, illustrated.

Image: Spring (detail), painting by Pieter Breughel the Younger?, 1635 Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The oldest dovecotes are thought to have been the fortified dovecotes of Upper Egypt, and the domed dovecotes of Iran. In these hot, dry regions, it was not only the meat and eggs that were used, but the droppings were in great demand as fertilisers.

Dovecotes appeared in Europe along with the Romans. The presence of dovecotes is not noted in France before the Roman invasion of Gaul by Caesar. Columbaria, or pigeon farms were then a passion in Rome: the Roman, generally round, columbarium had its interior covered with a white coating of marble powder.

The French word for dovecote is pigeonnier or colombier. In some French provinces, especially Normandy, France, the dovecotes were built of wood or stone and could be circular, square and occasionally octagonal in form. Some of the medieval French abbeys had very large stone dovecotes on their grounds.

In Brittany the dovecote was sometimes built directly into the upper walls of the farmhouse or manor-house, and, in rare cases, it was built into the upper gallery of the lookout tower, called tour-fuie.

You will find that people all over the world have kept pigeons and built dwellings for the of one sort or another and pigeon-keeping as a hobby still thrives today.

Image: Pigeonnier Manoir d'ango Dieppe Courtesy Renata (talk), Wikimedia

Fancy Pigeon...
A.f. Lydon

Buy This at Allposters.com

There's no true scientific difference between pigeons and doves, they both belong to the family Columbidae. While the smaller pigeons often get called 'doves', this is fairly inconsistent and the real difference is the way we think of them. 'Doves' would never be called vermin, and the Pigeon of Peace doesn't sound quite right. So, doves are things to do with love, and pigeons are to be eradicated from our cities.

Image: Dove of Peace, presented by His Holiness Pope John Paul II, on the occasion of his visit to the United Nations, 2 October 1979. The mosaic is a copy of one that was executed in the Constantinian Basilica during the pontificate of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216). The enamels were made in 1727, the frame, made in 1796, is of gilt bronze. Courtesy of Gryffindor, Wikimedia Commons