No. 2021

Squabs a la Carolina

Pigeonneaux a la Caroline

Cut up some squabs after being dressed in six pieces each; have the same quantity of blanched terrapin of the same size; place them in a saucepan and moisten with half Madeira and half stock (No. 194a); season with salt and pepper and boil up once, then finish cooking in a slack oven for about thirty minutes; when done thicken the sauce with hard boiled egg-yolks pounded with as much butter and then passed through a sieve, add a little white wine and season highly. Roll well the meat in the sauce to have it thick, and serve the whole inside a border made of rice boiled in salted water, and fresh butter added, for ten minutes or until it ceases to crackle between the teeth, then drain and mingle it with a little bechamel (No. 409). Mold this rice in a liberally buttered plain border mold (Fig. 139), push it into the oven for a few moments, invert it on a dish, remove the mold and fill in the center with the stew.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's stew of squab and terrapin belongs to a moment when diamondback terrapin was a standard luxury ingredient. It no longer is, and that single fact governs the dish.

Terrapin is the blockerThe turtle meant here is the diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin), the estuarine species Gilded Age kitchens bought by the dozen. Populations collapsed under exactly this kind of demand; commercial harvest is now banned or tightly restricted in most Atlantic and Gulf states and the species is listed on CITES Appendix II, so it is not realistically or lawfully obtainable for the table. A current recipe should be used instead.
Slack ovenRanhofer gives no temperatures. A slack or cool oven is conventionally read today as somewhere around 275-300F. He uses it here as a gentle braise, not a roast, so nothing colours.
SquabA squab is a domestic pigeon slaughtered at about four weeks, before it flies, which is why the flesh is dark and tender rather than tough. It is still sold, usually frozen, from game and poultry suppliers at roughly 1 lb per bird. Cutting one into six means legs, wings and the breast split.
The numbered cross-referencesNo. 409 is Ranhofer's bechamel, as the recipe itself states, and No. 194a one of his stocks; the border mould in Fig. 139 is a plain ring mould, for which a savarin or ring tin is the nearest modern equivalent.
The egg-yolk liaisonHard-boiled yolks pounded with butter and sieved thicken the sauce without flour and give it a granular richness. Keep the pan off a hard boil once the liaison goes in or the sauce is liable to break.
"Until it ceases to crackle between the teeth"The test is the point at which no chalky core remains. The recipe gives ten minutes or that test, whichever comes first; modern long-grain rice may well need longer.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this dish is a fair sample of what that kitchen thought expensive: squab, Madeira, and terrapin, the last of which was the defining American luxury food of the late nineteenth century. Terrapin stewed with Madeira and an egg-and-butter liaison was a set piece of Baltimore and Philadelphia cookery before New York restaurants took it up, and the price it commanded in the 1880s and 1890s is generally credited with driving the diamondback to near-commercial extinction by the 1920s. The name has sometimes been read as a reference to the rice rather than to a person, though it is also a conventional French garnish name: Carolina rice was the benchmark long grain of the American market, and a moulded rice border was the standard way to present a rich stew in a French-trained kitchen. Ranhofer numbered his recipes so that a working cook could chain them together, which is why the stock and bechamel appear only as figures in parentheses.