No. 1959

Pigeons a la Chartreuse

Blanch half a cabbage and cut it up into two parts, remove the core, then braise these with half a pound of bacon. Place some melted fat pork in a saucepan and fry in it three pigeons; when colored range them over the cabbage and garnish the spaces between the pigeons with turnips and carrots each blanched separately, and small onions browned in a pan; season and then withdraw the saucepan, pushing it into a moderate oven. A quarter of an hour later moisten with a gill of hot stock (No. 194a). Finish cooking the pigeons and vegetables very slowly; untruss the birds and dress them over the braised cabbage laid in the center of the dish; between each pigeon place a cluster of of onions, turnips and carrots, separating each one of these by a thick slice of the bacon standing upright. Increase the quantity of pigeon stock with a little clear gravy (No. 404), suppress all the fat and thicken lightly with a little brown sauce (No. 414); strain this, pour part over the pigeons, cut the causages in slices and dress them around the pigeons one overlapping the other. Serve the rest of the sauce separately.

← No. 1958 Guinea Fowls with Sauerkraut Pigeons & Squabs No. 1960 Pigeons a la Lombardy—Poeled →

For the Modern Kitchen

A braise in the classic French manner: everything cooks in one covered pan and the garnish is assembled as architecture on the platter. Two things in Ranhofer's text need sorting out before you start.

The missing sausagesThe final line tells you to slice "the causages" (sausages) and ring them around the birds, but no sausage appears earlier in the recipe. A small poached pork sausage or two, cooked alongside the cabbage, is the likeliest thing intended. Add about half a pound if you want the dish as dressed.
Oven and gill"Moderate oven" is usually read as somewhere around 350F. A gill is half a cup, and the text specifies hot stock, not cold, so the braise does not stall.
The hinge: two-stage cookingThe birds go into the oven dry for fifteen minutes before any liquid is added. That dry period sets the colour from the pork-fat searing; moisten too early and you get a pale stew. Keep the liquid shallow throughout — this is a braise, not a poach.
Pigeon versus squabWild pigeon is lean and wants the full slow braise the recipe calls for. Farmed squab, which is what you will actually find frozen at a good butcher, will be tender considerably sooner and turns dry if pushed past that. Three birds serve three, or six if you are carving them into halves.
Bacon and fat porkThe half pound of bacon is a slab piece, braised whole with the cabbage and then cut into thick upright slices for the platter — not rashers. The recipe does not say whether it is smoked. "Melted fat pork" is simply rendered lard or fatback drippings; use lard or duck fat.
Blanch each vegetable separatelyTurnips, carrots and cabbage all leach and all cook at different rates. Blanching them apart keeps the carrots orange and the turnips from tasting of cabbage water; it is worth the extra pans.
The sauce numbersNo. 194a is a plain white or brown stock, No. 404 a clear meat gravy, No. 414 a brown sauce. In a modern kitchen: skim the braising liquid thoroughly, add a little good stock, reduce, and thicken with a spoonful of beurre manié or a demi-glace. Skimming the fat is not optional here — the bacon and lard leave a great deal.
Braise the cabbage properly firstHalf a cabbage, blanched, cored and cut in two, needs 40 minutes or so with the bacon before the birds arrive on top. If it goes in raw under a browned pigeon, the bird will be finished long before the cabbage is.

A Little History

A chartreuse in nineteenth-century French cookery meant a dish built up in a mould with vegetables and cabbage — the name generally traced to the Carthusian monks, whose meatless diet gave their name to vegetable-heavy preparations, however much meat later cooks smuggled in. By the time Charles Ranhofer was writing at Delmonico's, the term had loosened to cover any braise of small birds set on braised cabbage with a formal garnish of turned root vegetables and bacon, and the elaborate platter assembly here is pure restaurant service: the cook does the work in one pan, the dining room sees a composed centrepiece. That pigeons and squabs get a whole section of The Epicurean (1894) is a reminder of how ordinary they were on American menus — pigeon was cheap, plentiful and considered good enough for the best tables, a standing that would not survive the twentieth century.