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Small Quenelles
Mushrooms. Truffles. Cockscombs. Truss and braise the pigeons in the stock. the block of fried bread. Pour the sauce round the entrée, and place the garnish of quenelles, mushrooms, truffles, and cockscombs in the centre.
When done, glaze them. Dish them up against
The text as printed has come through scrambled — the sentences run out of order and the quenelle mixture itself is missing, referred to only by the recipe's title. Read in its intended sequence it is a braised pigeon entrée finished with a garnish, and that is how the notes below treat it.
- The correct order of workTruss and braise the pigeons in stock; when done, glaze them; dish them up against a block of fried bread; pour the sauce round the entrée and place the garnish of quenelles, mushrooms, truffles and cockscombs in the centre. The printed page has these clauses shuffled.
- Quenelles are assumed, not givenA book of this class expected the cook to know the standard forcemeat — pounded raw veal, chicken or game bound with panada and egg, sieved, then shaped in two teaspoons and poached in barely trembling salted stock. Water at a rolling boil breaks them apart; keep the liquid well below a simmer.
- Pigeon means squabThe birds intended are young domestic pigeons of roughly 12–16 oz, sold now as squab. Wood pigeon is leaner, tougher and wants longer braising. Squab are done at about 30–40 minutes in stock kept at a bare simmer.
- CockscombsBlanched, peeled and poached cockscombs were a standard Victorian garnish and are effectively unobtainable outside specialist butchery. Leave them out, or substitute small poached button onions or blanched sweetbread pieces if you want the pale note they contributed.
- GlazingNot sugar. The braising liquor is reduced to a syrupy, sticky glaze and brushed over the birds, which are then flashed in a hot oven or under the salamander until they shine.
- The block of fried breadA croûton in the older sense — a slab of crustless bread cut to a squared shape, fried in clarified butter until crisp and dry, used as a plinth so the birds sit above the sauce rather than in it.
- TrufflesWhere the original assumed fresh black truffle, a modern cook will more often reach for preserved. Add it off the heat at the end; long contact with hot stock strips what aroma the tinned product has.
- YieldOne pigeon per person is the usual allowance for an entrée course. The dish is meant to be served hot from the moment it is composed, so have the fried bread, garnish and reduced sauce all ready before the birds come out of the braise.
The quenelle is a French refinement of a much older European habit of pounding meat or fish to a paste and poaching it in small dumplings — the word is generally traced to the German Kn del. It had become one of the signatures of professional kitchen work in Britain: a garnish that announced the cook could handle a mortar, a sieve and a two-spoon shaping technique, and that the household could afford the labour. The company it keeps here — braised pigeon, truffles, mushrooms and cockscombs mounted on a fried bread plinth — is grande cuisine, and the cockscombs in particular are a survival from much older courtly cookery, prized for texture rather than flavour and long since dropped from the repertoire. That the recipe names no quantities at all is itself telling: books of high class cookery were written for cooks in service who already knew the standard forcemeat and needed only to be told how the dish was assembled and sent out.