No. 1960

Pigeons a la Lombardy—Poeled

Pigeonneaux a la Lombarde-Poeles

Prepare eight pigeons; singe, draw and truss for an entree (No. 178); wrap them up in a dry matignon (No. 406), with slices of fat pork and then in strong buttered paper. Butter and garnish the bottom of a saucepan with sliced carrots and onions, thyme, bay leaf and sprigs of parsley, add the pigeons, half a pint of white wine and as much stock (No. 194a), boil until there is no more moisture, then remoisten to half the height of the birds and let simmer gently until they are cooked, which will take from thirty to forty-five minutes, drain and strain the stock, skim off all its fat and reduce. Dish the pigeons in a circle over artichoke bottoms fried in butter and fill up the middle with a garnishing of escaloped sweetbreads also fried in butler, and on top lay small squares of cooked lean ham half an inch in diameter and fried in butter, and over these cooked channeled mushroom (No. 118) heads. Cover these garnishings with veloute sauce (No. 415) stirred into the pigeon stock and serve also a sauce-boatful of the same sauce.

← No. 1959 Pigeons a la Chartreuse Pigeons & Squabs No. 1961 Pigeons a la Valenciennes →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A poêled bird: cooked in a covered pan with aromatics and very little liquid, so it half-steams and half-roasts in its own butter and fat. Ranhofer's cross-references assume you own the rest of the book, so the sub-recipes need spelling out.

MatignonNo. 406 is a fondue of finely diced carrot, onion, celery and raw ham or fat pork, sweated in butter with thyme and bay until soft, then bound with a little madeira and cooled. "Dry" means cooked down until no liquid remains, so it will hold against the birds as a paste rather than run off.
The wrappingMatignon, then sheets of fat pork (fatback or thin-sliced unsmoked bard), then buttered paper tied on with string. Parchment stands in for the old kitchen paper. The point is insulation: the breast never sees direct heat and the vegetable paste perfumes the flesh as it cooks.
Half a pintRanhofer worked in American measure, so half a pint is one cup: a cup of white wine and a cup of stock. No. 194a is one of the book's lighter stocks; use a light veal or poultry stock, and keep it unsalted, since it is reduced hard later.
Squab, not pigeonThese are young birds of about 1 lb, sold today as squab, often frozen. Wild pigeon is tougher and gamier, and in some jurisdictions its taking is restricted. Eight birds serve eight as an entree in the old sense, four as a main course.
TimingThirty to forty-five minutes gives a fully cooked bird, which is what the recipe intends. Some modern kitchens serve squab breast pink, around 135F; that is well below the temperature at which poultry is considered safe, and is a choice made at the cook's own risk. Cooked through as written, the legs will still be tender.
SweetbreadsEscaloped means sliced. Veal sweetbreads need soaking in several changes of cold water, a brief blanch, cooling under a weight and peeling of the outer membrane before they are sliced and fried. None of that is optional and none of it is in the text.
Channeled mushroomsNo. 118 is fluting: cutting shallow spiral grooves into a peeled cap with the tip of a knife, then cooking in butter with lemon so it stays white. Purely decorative, and plain sautéed caps will taste the same.
Finishing the sauceStrain the pan liquid, skim the fat, reduce it to a syrupy glaze, then stir it into velouté (No. 415, a light stock thickened with blond roux). Reduce the glaze before it meets the sauce, not after, or the velouté thins and loses its gloss.
A typo"fried in butler" is an obvious error for butter.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, in two spells with a break in the 1870s, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire written down: roughly twelve hundred pages of numbered recipes that refer to one another rather than repeat themselves. Pigeon occupies a long chapter because squab was then a standard restaurant bird, raised commercially and cheap enough to appear in quantity, in a way it has not been since. Poîler—untranslatable, sometimes rendered "pot-roasting"—is the technique this dish turns on: a bird sealed with fat and aromatics in a closed pan, cooking in the vapor of a small amount of wine and stock. The garnish name à la lombarde follows the nineteenth-century French convention of attaching a place to a fixed set of accompaniments, here artichoke bottoms, sweetbreads, ham and mushrooms; the association with Lombardy is a kitchen label rather than any documented regional dish.