Home › Entrées › Two Bordeaux Pigeons (Half pint of Brown Sauce)
Two Bordeaux Pigeons (Half pint of Brown Sauce)
Half pint of Brown Sauce.
Six stoned Olives.
Six pieces of Carrot turned in the shape of an olive. Six pieces of Turnip turned in the shape of an olive.
This is a garnish formula rather than a full method — the book assumes the cook already knows how to truss and cook a pigeon and how to make brown sauce, and only specifies what makes the dish Bordeaux. Everything below fills in what the original leaves unsaid.
- What is missingThere is no cooking instruction here at all. The entry tells you the sauce and the three garnish elements for two birds; the pigeons themselves are braised or roasted, jointed or left whole, and dressed with the sauce and garnish at the moment of serving.
- Half a pintAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, so about 1¼ US cups of finished sauce for two birds. That is a generous coating quantity, which suggests the sauce is meant to be reduced and glossy rather than served as a pool.
- Brown sauceIn a book of this class "brown sauce" is likely to mean something close to espagnole oststock a brown roux moistened with brown stock, simmered long and skimmed, and sometimes reduced further with stock into a demi-glace; some books of the period use the term for a much simpler roux-and-stock sauce. A modern reduced veal stock thickened lightly gives a similar effect with far less work.
- Turned vegetables"Turned in the shape of an olive" is the classical tourn rel with flat facets, pared with a small curved knife ‑inch lengths first, then pare them so the pieces are uniform and cook evenly. Boil or glaze them separately in butter and a little stock, not in the sauce.
- The olivesOlives of this period were generally sold in brine, which can be strong; if yours are, blanch them for a minute in boiling water and drain before they go near the sauce, or the brine will flatten it. Add them at the last moment so they warm through without going leathery.
- The pigeonsPigeon in a book of this period usually means a young bird too, generally somewhere in the region of 12 to 16 oz, though the entry does not say. Squab is still sold by game butchers. Older birds want a slow braise; young ones are roasted hot and briefly.
- YieldTwo birds, two portions as an entrée in the Victorian sense — one of several small courses. As a main course today, allow a bird each and increase the garnish proportionally.
Books of "high class cookery" written for late Victorian and Edwardian professional cooks are largely built on the French classical repertoire, where a dish name is really a shorthand for its garnish: name the garnish and a trained cook knows the whole plate. That is why this entry consists of nothing but a sauce and three sets of six items — it is a specification, not a lesson. Garnishes bearing regional French names are conventionally traced to the district whose produce or wine they evoke, and here the olives supply the salt-and-bitter note that keeps a rich reduction from cloying. The insistence that carrot and turnip be cut to the exact shape and size of the olives is characteristic of the period's kitchens.