No. 1964

Pigeons, Monarch Style—Smothered

Pigeons au Monarque--a l'Etuvee

Choose six good squabs; draw, singe, and clean them well; dip the breasts into boiling water to harden the skin and facilitate the larding process, then lard them with small lardons of fat pork (No. 4, Fig. 54), and braise them in a mirepoix stock (No. 419); glaze and let them get a fine color; when done, drain and dress. Garnish around with stuffed olives, truffles, mushrooms, quenelles, cocks'-combs, and kidneys, or the combs may be imitated by pieces of veal palate removed with a cutter into comb-shapes. Cover with a veloute sauce (No. 415) reduced with mushroom essence (No. 398), and thickened with raw egg-yolks and fresh butter, sending some of the sauce to the table separately. Surround these garnishings with trussed crawfish, and between these lay slices of foies-gras an inch and a quarter in diameter by three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness, breaded a la Villeroi and fried.

← No. 1963 Pigeons, Huntress Style—Breasts Pigeons & Squabs No. 1965 Potted Pigeons →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a set-piece from Delmonico's, written for a brigade with a stockpot already going and a larding needle in the drawer. The dish is buildable at home if you treat the garnish list as optional and concentrate on the braise and the finished sauce.

The hinge: finishing the sauceThe velouté is thickened off the heat with raw yolks and butter, and it must not return to a boil or it will scramble and break. Reduce the sauce first, pull the pan, whisk the yolks in with a ladle of hot sauce to temper, then return it to low heat only long enough to reach about 180F and coat a spoon.
SquabsSix squabs at 12-16 oz each will serve six as a course. Modern squab is sold ready-drawn, so "draw, singe and clean" reduces to checking for pinfeathers and removing the wishbone; a poussin or Cornish hen of similar weight substitutes, though the meat is paler and milder.
LardingLardons here are thin strips of fat pork threaded through the breast with a larding needle to keep it moist. Salt pork or unsmoked fatback works; if you have no needle, bard instead by tying thin sheets of fat or caul over the breasts and removing them for the final glazing.
Braising liquidRanhofer's mirepoix stock is a strong stock cooked down with diced root vegetables, ham or bacon trimmings and herbs, generally with wine. Use about a quart of good brown chicken or veal stock with that aromatic base; braise covered at 325F for 35-45 minutes, then uncover, baste with the reduced liquid and let the skin take colour.
Glaze"Glaze" means brushing repeatedly with heavily reduced stock until the skin shines. Reduce a cup of the braising liquid to a couple of tablespoons of syrupy glace and paint it on in the last few minutes.
Cocks'-combs and kidneysNeither is a supermarket item now. Ranhofer already offers the workaround: cooked veal palate stamped into comb shapes. Cockerel kidneys can be left out entirely without harming the dish, or replaced with a few pieces of poached sweetbread.
Mushroom essenceNo. 398 is simply the strained liquor from mushrooms cooked down with lemon and a little stock. Sauté a half pound of sliced mushrooms hard, deglaze, simmer 10 minutes and strain; reduce that to two or three tablespoons before adding it to the velouté.
Foie gras a la VilleroiThe rounds are coated in cold, set velouté, then breaded and fried, so the crumb crust holds a molten interior. Chill the sauce-coated discs thoroughly before breading and fry at 375F for well under a minute; foie gras renders fast and will simply melt if the fat is cool or the frying long.
Crawfish"Trussed" means the tail folded back and secured with the claws before boiling, so the cooked crawfish sits upright as decoration. Whole boiled crawfish or shell-on prawns do the same job.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York across some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole repertoire, cross-referenced by number like a technical manual. "Au Monarque" appears to be a house name rather than a dish with a documented origin, one of many grand-sounding labels Ranhofer attached to variations on braised squab; the identifying marks are the larded and glazed birds, a velouté finished with yolks, and a garnish of luxury trimmings. Cocks' combs, veal palate, truffles, crawfish and fried foie gras were staples of that style, and their presence here says less about pigeon than about how much of a large brigade's labour went into ornament. Squab was ordinary American food at the time, raised commercially near cities and common enough to appear in domestic cookbooks; it is the sauce and the garnish, not the bird, that made this a Delmonico's plate.