1. "Bridget, cook this please"
Posted by Harry on Feb-27th-04 at 12:19 PM

Found this recipe in a Civil War Cookbook:

PIGEON SOUP

8 pigeons
Spices
Salt
Parsley, chives or onions
Spinach
1/4 lb. butter
Bread crumbs

Take eight pigeons, cut down [chop] two of the oldest, and put them with the necks, pinions [wings], livers and gizzards of the others, into four quarts of water; let it boil till the substance is extracted, and strain it; season the [remaining six] pigeons with mixed spices and salt, and truss them as for stewing; pick and wash clean a handful of parsley, chives or young onions, and a good deal of spinach, chop them; put these in a frying-pan with a quarter of a pound of butter, and when it boils, mix in a handful of bread crumbs, keep stirring them with a knife till of a fine brown; boil the whole pigeons till they become tender in the soup, with the herbs, and fried bread. If the soup be not sufficiently high seasoned, add more mixed spices and salt.
From The Good Housekeeper by Sarah Josepha Hale, 1841

http://www.civilwarinteractive.com/cookbooksoups.htm

Could it have been the fate of the Borden pigeons?

Harry, my wife makes the "Lizzie Borden" sugar cookies from the recipe posted on the Forum a while back. They are good. As far as the pigeon soup is concerned perhaps it belongs in the category of meatloaf covered with water!

Ohmigawd!  Thank you, Harry, now I know just what to do with those flying varmints that soil my car!  Pigeon....the other white meat. 

I'd probably love the cookies, struggle through the meatloaf and mutton soup but I draw the line at pigeon soup.

I'd settle for johnny cakes and bananas too.   Assuming there were bananas on the table.

From the looks of that recipe, a better name might have been "Bird Bath Stew"

Eat it?? Well, now if I were on a steady diet of green bacon and hard tack I might (and that's a big "might"!) think about it. Otherwise methinks I'll pass... I'd sooner kiss a mule on the mouth!!

But... thanks, anyway (I think!)

Doug

Bird bath stew? Cats love drinking out of birdbaths
for some reason.....

Lizzie said she saw them in the house, so he must have brought them in for some reason.

If this was around the time of the house being painted, do you think the family who hires the help (say house painters) have to feed them?

(Message last edited Feb-27th-04  3:00 PM.)

I have eaten pigeons....

It is not uncommon to do so in France!

How did they taste? How were they cooked?

It was very good.  Served in a wine sauce, baked I imagine.

The pigeons came from farms meant to raise them as food and they were not shot or captured from statues around Paris!

That sure made me laugh Harry, I have a rule: I can't cook anything
with more than 2 steps. 

Does anyone know if the Borden's would have to feed the housepainters?

Just as a guess Kat, I would say no.

It would be interesting to know if the painters came each day or slept in the barn.  I would imagine they came daily and carried their meals in a pail.  I would think they got water from the pump in the barn.  They may have had some pears.

Those marvelously popular pears.  A magnet to all!

Hmmm...pigeons with pear sauce?

Would that recipe yield a broth or a meaty stew-like dish?  And how many people would 6 or 8 pigeons feed? 

It doesn't seem to me like there is all that much meat on them.

>Would that recipe yield a broth or a meaty stew-like dish? 
>And how many people would 6 or 8 pigeons feed? 

>
>It doesn't seem to me like there is all that much meat on
>them.

Well...according to Websters at least a squab is defined as a pigeon, approximately 4 weeks old; (the picture I have in mind is a roughly baseball-sized chicken, or a bit smaller.) And then... if your recipe's cookbook is taken into account - suggesting wild game available to the garden variety Billy Yank or Johnny Reb, the birds might actually have been very small.

Offhand I'd suppose 2 or 3 folks...

Doug

PS. I have a reprint of a medical manual from...ca. 1862-64 that lays out pretty well the recommended daily rations for the single soldier. Unfortunately, it covers everything  except Squab Stew. (I know, but it's faster to type "Squab" )

Just so happens that my father and grandfather ran a painting company that Grandfather would have founded in the early 20th century. (Grandfather had to give it up eventually, due to lead poisoning. My father was luckier and had fewer years of exposure to lead paint.)  Anyhow.  Dad and his men ALWAYS packed lunch boxes, and I don't recall their ever having to take on jobs they couldn't return home from at night.  They did both commercial and home painting.  Ours was a smaller town than Fall River in 1892, so I suspect that except, as Audrey suggests, for a few pears, they would have provided their own stuff unless a generous housewife brought them some cookies.  This is something I can't picture at the Borden house.  Come to think of it, Andrew cannily had the house painted in Spring--before the pears were ripe.
About the pigeons--somehow the baked pigeons in sauce sound much better than the pigeon stew.  I think the stew reminds me of burgoo: a foul Midwestern dish full of all kinds of unidentifiable game.  I never quite trusted its contents and gave it a wide berth when I was a kid.

--Lyddie

(Message last edited Feb-28th-04  5:31 PM.)

All the same, I think I'll pass. (urp!)

Thanks for the reply.
I suppose all those Crowe yard workers knocked off for lunch they brought, or went to the local restaurant?
I think there was a place to eat called Mrs. Tripp's(?), but I don't know if it was public.  That was on the same side of the street as the Bordens.

I think they would have brought pails same as school kids of the time. Is there something you're trying to trace here, Kat?  Something they might have observed during lunch or gossiped about downtown?

--Lyddie

According to some sources, Andrew allowed Lizzie to choose the colors and decide on trims, etc.  Maybe she supervised the painters as well. 

It has been said she was very hospitable....

Maybe she did offer them food.  I would imagine though she was too ashamed of the usual Borden fare to offer it to anyone.

I'm just interested in what the laborers did at the time.
Like if they drank on the job, stuff like that.
And if they were more likely to be fed and housed if they were working casually on a farm?

I'm not going to comment on a hospitable Lizzie...

(Message last edited Feb-29th-04  3:45 AM.)

This suggests Andy was trying to get Lizzie to 'buy-in' to this house by letting her decorate it as she wished. To avoid moving to another house?

Reputable contractors would not tolerate drinking on the job.  The job would suffer, and likewise so would their business by a damaged  reputation.  Women and children would be expected to be about the place, and gentlemen did their drinking apart from both and never during working hours.  And blue collar workers would often have very gentlemanly ways.

--Lyddie

(Message last edited Feb-29th-04  6:11 PM.)

Yes, that is all true.
As is the statistic (?) that painters MAY drink more than others, and suffer from diseases. Thought to be caused by the volatile chemicals they work with, or the lead in those paints of yesteryear.

I think it would behoove house painters climbing ladders to remain as sober as possible....