No. 1961

Pigeons a la Valenciennes

Cut six ounces of bacon into small dice; fry them for a few moments in butter, then lift out, leaving the fat in the saucepan, and into this put three fine, clean and trussed pigeons, also a few small onions and a garnished bunch of parsley (No. 123). Fry and moisten to half their height with broth, let fall to a glaze and remoisten once more to half the height of the pigeons and finish cooking over a moderate fire. When they are almost done strain the stock and return it to the sauce-pan without the onions and parsley and let boil up; now add four gills of good rice for each quart of liquid; put back the bacon and a coffeespoonful of prepared red pepper (No. 168) and finish all together. Dish up the rice, untruss the pigeons and dress them on top, surround the whole with small chipolata sausages and the small onions.

← No. 1960 Pigeons a la Lombardy—Poeled Pigeons & Squabs No. 1962 Pigeons Garnished with Montglas Cases—Stuffe →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade kitchen and a stock pot always at the ready. The dish is essentially a braise whose cooking liquid becomes the rice, so the volumes matter more than anything else here.

The hinge: measure the liquidEverything depends on straining the braising stock and measuring it before the rice goes in. Four gills of rice to a quart of liquid is 2 cups rice to 4 cups liquid — a standard ratio, but only if you top up or reduce the strained stock to a true quart first.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so four gills is 2 cups. Ranhofer's gill is the US one (4 fl oz), not the British 5 fl oz.
Pigeons and squabsThe book's pigeons are domestic birds; Ranhofer heads neighbouring entries 'Pigeons & Squabs', so the two were not simply interchangeable, squab being the younger bird. Farmed squab from a butcher or online game supplier is the nearest equivalent; two Cornish hens will stand in, though the meat is milder and paler. Wild pigeon is much leaner and tougher and will not suit this method.
"Let fall to a glaze"Cook the first addition of broth down until it is a sticky film on the pan bottom, just short of catching. That reduction is where the colour and depth come from; skipping it leaves a thin, grey braise.
The garnished bunch of parsleyNo. 123 is Ranhofer's garnished bunch of parsley, the standard bouquet of parsley with thyme and bay; check the entry itself for his exact make-up. Any standard bouquet works, and it is taken out when the stock is strained -- but the onions strained out with it are kept back, since the recipe uses them to surround the finished dish.
Prepared red pepperNo. 168 is Ranhofer's own prepared red pepper; consult that entry rather than assuming which pepper he meant. A coffeespoonful is a small spoon measure of uncertain size, somewhere between a quarter-teaspoon and a teaspoon, so add a modest amount of mild red pepper or paprika and adjust to taste.
TimingGentle braising takes roughly half an hour, and the rice needs about 18 minutes once it goes into the boiling stock, so add it while the birds finish and keep the heat low enough that the pan does not scorch.
ChipolatasThese are small, thin fresh pork sausages, not the pre-cooked cocktail sausages sold under the name in some markets. Poach or brown them separately and add them at the moment of dishing.
YieldThree birds with 2 cups of raw rice, sausages and onions serves six as part of a longer menu, or three generously as a main course.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years' cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in a long chapter of pigeon dishes that shows how ordinary squab was on an American restaurant menu of the period. The name is often said to point not to Valenciennes in French Flanders but to Valencia — French classical cookery used a la valenciennes for preparations built on rice with poultry, ham or sausage, an echo of Spanish rice cookery filtered through the nineteenth-century French repertoire, and on this traditional account the town's name absorbed the spelling, though the derivation is not documented. The construction here is telling: the birds are braised, the braising liquid is strained and measured, and the rice is cooked in it, so nothing of the pigeon is lost. Domestic pigeon lofts were still common enough in the 1890s that even a book aimed at luxury dining could afford to give squab a dozen pages.