No. 1967

Stewed Pigeons

Pigeons en Compote

Bleed six young pigeons in order to kill them, reserving the blood in a bowl; mix with it a spoonful of vinegar to prevent its coagulating. After the pigeons are drawn, singed and well cleansed, truss them with the legs thrust inside. Glaze four dozen small, raw onions, cut eight ounces of bacon into half inch pieces and fry them for a few moments in a saucepan with butter; remove them with a skimmer leaving in the fat, and to this add the pigeons, fry them on all their together sides, and season when they have acquired a fine color, then dredge over a spoonful of flour and cook together for two minutes while tossing them about, now moisten the pigeons gradually to their height with white wine and hot stock (No. 194a), stir the liquid till it boils rapidly, then leave it in this state for five minutes, afterward removing the saucepan to a more moderate fire; now add a garnished bunch of parsley (No. 123) and some mushroom peelings. When the pigeons are three-quarters done, put in both the glazed onions and the bacon and finish cooking together. At the last moment, drain out the pigeons, untruss and range them on a dish surrounded by the garnishings. Strain the sauce, free it of fat and thicken it with the blood mixed with two raw egg-yolks, cook this thickening without boiling it and finish the sauce with a piece of butter, then strain it over the pigeons.

← No. 1966 Pigeons, Printaniere Style Pigeons & Squabs No. 1968 Pigeons with Crawfish →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with numbered cross-references and a larder of half-made components. The dish is a classic compote — birds stewed with glazed onions and bacon, the sauce bound at the end with blood and yolk.

The hinge: the liaison must not boilBlood and egg yolk both set hard above a simmer, and a sauce finished with them will curdle into grains the moment it bubbles. Take the pan off the heat, temper the blood-and-yolk mixture with a ladle of hot sauce, return it and hold it just below a shiver until it coats a spoon, then mount with cold butter off the flame.
Sourcing the bloodAlmost no cook now kills their own birds, and poultry blood is hard to obtain at retail in many places. It is best got fresh from a licensed poultry butcher or game dealer, kept cold, acidulated with vinegar exactly as Ranhofer says, and used as soon as possible; blood from any uninspected source should not be used. A sauce thickened with yolks and a little beurre manié is the usual substitute, though it will be paler and less savoury.
"A spoonful"Probably a tablespoon, though Ranhofer does not say so here. The one spoonful of flour for six birds is a very light bind — the body of the sauce comes from the reduction and the final liaison, not the roux.
The cross-referencesNo. 194a is one of Ranhofer's stocks, and a good unsalted chicken stock stands in. No. 123 is his garnished bunch of parsley — in effect a bouquet garni of parsley with thyme and bay.
BaconLikely unsmoked salt pork belly (lard de poitrine), cut into lardons, rather than modern cured bacon. Modern smoked streaky bacon will dominate the sauce; use pancetta or blanch the bacon first to draw out salt and smoke.
Mushroom peelingsA professional economy from a kitchen that turned mushrooms all day. Half a dozen sliced chestnut mushrooms, or a few dried ones, give the same earthy backbone; they are strained out with the bouquet at the end.
TimingSquab — birds of about four weeks, 12–16 oz — are tender in 25 to 35 minutes at a bare simmer, and the onions and bacon go in around the 20-minute mark. Older wood pigeon needs well over an hour and will still be firm; if that is what you have, the breasts are better cooked separately and the legs braised.
YieldSix birds, one per person, with the onions and lardons as the whole garnish. It wants nothing but bread or plain potatoes to take up the sauce.

A Little History

En compote in nineteenth-century French cookery does not mean stewed fruit: it describes meat or birds cooked slowly with a garnish of small glazed onions and lardons until the flesh gives at the joint, a treatment given to pigeons well before Ranhofer. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working record of that kitchen, which is why the recipe assumes you have stock No. 194a and bouquet No. 123 already to hand. Thickening a sauce with the bird's own blood is the oldest part of the dish — the same principle as civet of hare — and it explains the opening instruction to kill by bleeding. Pigeon was then a cheap and common American meat: dovecotes and, later, commercial squab farms supplied restaurants, and the wild passenger pigeon that had glutted earlier markets was, by the time this book appeared, all but gone.