No. 2017

Squabs with Figaro Sauce—Fried

Pigeonneaux Frits a la Sauce Figaro

Singe and draw some young, tender pigeons; truss as for an entree (No. 178), then wrap them in slices of fat pork. Butter a saucepan, line it with sliced carrots and onions, and a garnished bunch of parsley (No. 123); lay the squabs on top. Moisten to half their height and let the liquid fall to a glaze, then remoisten and boil very slowly until cooked to perfection, adding half a bottleful of white wine, pouring it in at two or three different intervals. Let the squabs become cold, then split them in two, pare nicely and dip them in frying batter (No. 137), and fry to a fine color, having the birds well heated throughout. Drain, wipe off, and salt; dress them on a folded napkin with a bunch of parsley on top. Serve at the same time but separately a figaro mayonnaise sauce (No. 609).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is a two-stage one: the birds are braised whole, chilled, halved, then battered and fried to order. The braise is what makes the dish, and it can be done a day ahead.

The hinge: chill before fryingThe squabs must be completely cold and firm before they are split and battered, or they fall apart in the fryer and the batter slides off. Braise the day before and refrigerate them in their own reduced liquid.
Squab size and countA squab is a young, never-flown pigeon, usually 12-16 oz dressed. Half a bird is a first course; allow one whole bird per person for a main. Ranhofer gives no number of birds; use as many as will fit the pan in a single layer.
Fat porkThis generally means fresh pork fatback cut into thin barding sheets rather than smoked bacon, though period usage of the term is not always consistent. If you cannot find fatback, use thinly sliced unsmoked pancetta or lardo and cut the added salt; anything smoked or heavily salted will carry into the braising liquid.
The braising panA heavy saucepan or Dutch oven just large enough to hold the birds in one layer. The carrot, onion and parsley bundle form a bed so the squabs never touch the metal; No. 123 is Ranhofer's cross-reference for the garnished bunch of parsley, his equivalent of a bouquet garni.
"Moisten to half their height"Add white stock or light chicken stock to come halfway up the birds, then let it cook down to a syrupy glaze, add more, and repeat. This glazing-and-remoistening cycle is what builds flavor; skipping it leaves a thin, watery braise.
Half a bottleful of white wineRoughly 12 oz, or about 375 ml, of dry white wine, added in two or three additions during the cooking rather than all at once. Ranhofer gives no time, only 'boil very slowly until cooked to perfection'; keep it at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil, and allow enough time for the two or three reduce-to-glaze cycles.
Frying batter and oilNo. 137 is Ranhofer's frying batter, a flour-based batter of the usual restaurant type lightened with beaten egg white. Fry at 350-360F: hot enough to color and crisp the batter, gentle enough to reheat the birds through, about 4-5 minutes.
Figaro sauceRanhofer's No. 609 is mayonnaise worked with tomato purée and blanched, chopped parsley or parsley juice, served cold. It is an uncooked egg-yolk emulsion; use pasteurized eggs or a commercial mayonnaise as the base if serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
PresentationThe folded napkin on the platter was standard nineteenth-century service for fried food, absorbing oil and keeping the crust dry. A wire rack over a warm platter does the same job.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for most of the last third of the nineteenth century, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertory set down in some thousands of numbered entries, each cross-referenced to the others, which is why this recipe reads as a chain of numbers. Pigeon was ordinary American market poultry then, sold live or freshly killed in city markets, and a whole section of the book is given to it. The braise-chill-batter-fry sequence is a classic French restaurant economy: birds cooked in quantity in advance, then finished in seconds when the order came in. The sauce name is traditionally said to nod to Beaumarchais's barber, as several French sauces of the period are thought to have done; figaro is generally described in the older manuals as mayonnaise reddened with tomato and greened with parsley, a light restaurant sauce rather than a domestic one.