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Fried Pigeons
Pluck and prepare three pigeons for cooking, split them into halves lengthwise, remove the breast-bone, and beat the flesh flat. Put them into a fryingpan with two ounces of butter and a little pepper and salt. When fried, place them between two plates with a weight on top, and leave till cold. Prepare four ounces of quenelle forcemeat, and spread it over the side of each half; roll them in beaten egg and breadcrumbs, and fry them in clarified fat. When cooked put them in a circle on a hot dish, fill the center with a macedoine of vegetables, pour some hot brown sauce round, and serve.
A French hotel preparation in three stages: fry, press cold, then coat and fry again. The pressing is what makes it work, and skipping it leaves you with a floppy half-bird that will not hold its stuffing.
- The birdBuy squab (young pigeon), sold frozen or fresh from game and specialty butchers, roughly 12-16 oz each. Modern birds come plucked and drawn; the original instruction to "pluck and prepare" assumes you are starting with the whole bird.
- Splitting and flatteningCut down either side of the backbone, halve the bird lengthwise through the breast, then lift out the breastbone and ribs. Flatten under a heavy pan rather than pounding hard, or the thin breast meat will tear.
- Two ounces of butterFour tablespoons. Enough to shallow-fry six halves in a wide pan over moderate heat; the first frying is meant to set and partly cook the flesh, not brown it deeply.
- The pressPressing between two plates under a weight while the meat cools is the hinge of the dish. It compacts the flesh so the forcemeat layer stays put and the crumb coating adheres. Give it at least two hours in the refrigerator, weighted with a couple of cans.
- Quenelle forcemeatA fine mousseline of raw veal, chicken or game breast pounded with egg white and cream, seasoned and passed through a sieve. Four ounces is about a half cup total. A food processor does in a minute what the original expected you to do in a mortar.
- Cooking the forcemeat throughThe raw farce goes on top of part-cooked bird and must reach 165F in the second frying. A thin, even layer no more than a quarter-inch deep is essential; a thick pad will brown outside and stay raw at the meat line.
- Clarified fatClarified butter or a neutral oil at 340-350F. Whole butter will burn before the forcemeat sets. Fry in batches so the temperature holds.
- Macedoine and brown sauceA macedoine is small even dice of mixed vegetables, classically carrot, turnip, green beans and peas, cooked separately and bound with butter. The brown sauce is espagnole or a reduced demi-glace; a well-reduced veal or chicken stock thickened lightly stands in.
- YieldThree birds give six halves. As a main course with the vegetables it feeds three.
Oscar Tschirky was never a cook by trade — he was the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel — but the book that carries his name gathers the hotel's working repertoire at the close of the 1890s, when American luxury dining was conducted almost entirely in French terms. Everything about this dish is off the French professional grid: the flattening and pressing, the layer of quenelle forcemeat, the crumb coat, the ring of birds around a macedoine with sauce poured round the outside rather than over the top. Pigeon itself needed no explanation to a reader of the period; squab was standard butcher's stock in American cities and turns up throughout nineteenth-century cookbooks roasted, potted, stewed in pies and, as here, dressed up for a hotel menu. The technique of cooking, cooling under weight and re-frying was most likely a kitchen's answer to service pressure — the first two stages could be done hours ahead, leaving only a few minutes' work when the order came in.