I know at fancy restaurants we can get squab, which is the young version similar to what veal is to cattle, but why don’t we breed/raise pigeons for food? Pigeons are widely-consumed in Asia, Middle East, Europe, so why haven’t we ever cultivated them? Distaste due to our exposure to wild urban “pests” we see every day?
Somewhere along the way chicken completely supplanted it in the US. Chicken were cheaper and generally easier to work with for butchering and cooking. No idea about taste, I have no clue how pigeon taste.
I did some quick checking, it looks like chicken started taking over by 1910 and by 1950 there was very little pigeon farming left. That 1910 coincides with when chicken farming really took off it rural towns of central New Jersey like Howell and Lakewood.
But pigeon was a standard food before 1910 in the US.
I was just looking at wiki and saw that, at least in part, passenger pigeons were over hunted into extinction.
Although habitat loss was a contributing factor, the species [ passenger pigeon ] is thought to have been massively over-hunted, being used as food for slaves and, later, the poor, in the United States throughout the 19th century.
I would assume pigeon tastes similar to dove, which I usually have after a dove hunt once a year. Presumably, domesticated birds would be larger and like chickens (as compared to pheasants) would have been selectively bred for more meat - nevertheless, it seems like a high effort/low yield prospect for a food source. We just breast out our doves and grill them wrapped in bacon. Plucking and roasting just wouldn’t be worth it.
ETA: It sounds cliche, but dove tastes a lot like chicken. Even wild birds aren’t gamey at all, which can probably be ascribed to their diet.
I too have no idea about taste. I don’t think I’ve ever had squab. I’m pretty sure I haven’t before. I don’t think I’ve had dove either.
I’m reminded about a San Francisco newspaper article about 30-some years ago, about middle school students in the public schools. I don’t have a cite for this, this is purely from memory, but the article said that with the large recent infusion of immigrants that expected behaviors at schools were a little different.
One teacher spotted students at recess out in the courtyard of a San Francisco middle school. They had caught and killed a pigeon, started a small fire, and cooked and ate the pigeon right there during recess.
I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with that behavior. Those unfortunate kids were apparently pretty hungry. But that’s not something I’d expect to have seen when I was in middle school out during recess.
Bingo! Pigeons can fly, and they would constantly be escaping captivity.
I had squab maybe thirty years ago at a Chinese restaurant. I found it to be like a darker version of chicken thigh meat, pretty tender but with a bit of a gamey, liver-like flavor. Since I don’t like organ meats in general, I wasn’t that taken with it.
Although chicken is now considered the lowest denominator protein in the United States, for a quite a while it was considered a luxury meat akin to how a nicely marbled steak is viewed today. It was often pricier than beef or pork into the middle of the 20th century. It was only when mass production really took off that chicken became the new standard.
well, now that I think about it, I’ve read about and seen in movies how inner-city dwellers maintained pigeon coops on roofs. but haven’t seen anything to substantiate that. Since they’re in a controlled cage and fed “healthy?” feed, I would think they would be okay to eat
I have two problems with this incident. First, children at school shouldn’t be starting fires without adult supervision. Second, I consider a city pigeon as basically a flying city rat–way too polluted and potentially diseased to be safe to eat.
Other than “liver-like,” this is precisely my experience. Chicken is better.
In my experience, “should” isn’t a concept that middle school kids are familiar with.
Exactly. And the recess yard was large enough that the supervisors couldn’t closely watch every kid out there.
Moderating: The school anecdote comments would probably be better for another thread.
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I had pigeon once in SEA. That was a lot of small bones for two chicken nuggets worth of meat.
We don’t eat goats in the US either for I am guessing the exact same reason. They eat rough, but anyone willing to put in effort to keep them will find a much higher calorie count in just about any other species.
A hunting lodge a mile from my work raises them to shoot for target practive. Some times they escape and hang out in our shed.
sorry, I have to disagree with you–we not only eat goat in Jamaica, Mexican and Indian cuisine, we raise them for dairy and meat purposes.
Goat sales in 2024 reached $27 million
as for small portion, so is quail
I eat goat a few times a month, thanks to the tastes of my immigrant spouse. It can be delicious.
In the US, in the US. I am aware that people all over the world eat snails.
When I think this place should change it’s name to the ‘Well, Actually’ Message Board it’s time for me to take a break. And that moment is now, so I think you both.
- I like goat. My Italian landlord in New England made it almost every Sunday.
- I had family in NYC as a kid. From their apartment, you could see the neighbor’s rooftop dovecote.
That much of your post had me wondering how the Italian guy was gonna roast your sibs. Or your pet goat you thought of as family. 
Though raising pigeons in roof-top coops for food might have been a thing, racing pigeons and fancy pigeons are much more of a thing. There is someone nearish me (as the crow flies 
) who races them as I see white racing pigeons from time to time, Usually en route as a flock and moving fast, but a couple of times as singletons “taking a break” on the ground.
Early in the not bad (but also not awesome) Francis Ford Coppola film The Cotton Club, Jewish gangster Dutch Schultz is visiting with Irish gangster Owney Madden at Madden’s roof-top pigeon coop. Dutch Schultz expresses bewilderment at being led there and mentions he used to catch and eat pigeons as a poor kid. Madden’s man warns Schultz not to mention that to Madden, who clearly keeps them as a pet fancier (Schultz does anyway of course, he’s the vicious antagonist of the story 
).