No. 2114

Plovers a la Montauban

Pluviers a la Montauban

Draw, singe and clean the plovers, thrust the legs inside and split them lengthways through the back; open, beat and season with salt and pepper; saute them in clarified butter, drain this off and moisten with a little champagne and brown sauce (No.414), adding some peeled and sliced or whole truffles. Dress the plovers in a straight row, surround them with the truffles and strain the sauce through a tammy, pour part of it over and serve the rest in a sauce-boat.

← No. 2113 Golden Plover or Grass Plover and Bustard Pl Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2115 Plovers a la Stoughton →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a game recipe for a bird that can no longer legally be taken or sold. The technique is straightforward; the ingredient is the problem.

Plovers are protectedNative plovers in North America are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which ended the market hunting that supplied kitchens like Delmonico's. Killing, buying, selling or possessing them is a federal offence. European protection is patchier: most species are protected under the EU Birds Directive and national law, but a few, the Eurasian golden plover and lapwing among them, remain huntable in some countries.
Some species are worse than protectedThe piping plover is listed as endangered or threatened in the United States, and mountain plover populations have declined sharply. In the United States there is no legal source, wild or farmed, for the bird this recipe calls for.
The neighbouring entry compounds itThe cross-reference to bustard is equally dead: the great bustard was extirpated from Britain in the 1830s and remains a protected species everywhere it survives. Nineteenth-century game chapters routinely treat as pantry staples birds that are now conservation priorities.
If you want the dishUse a current recipe for a legally sold bird from a game dealer or butcher. Do not adapt this one by substitution and assume the rest holds.
On the reading, for interest"Tammy" is a tammy cloth, a worsted straining cloth for finishing sauces; a fine chinois or muslin is its modern equivalent. "Brown sauce (No. 414)" is Ranhofer's espagnole, a long-simmered brown roux sauce, not bottled British brown sauce.
What the method tells youSplitting through the back, flattening and sauteing in clarified butter is a common nineteenth-century treatment for small birds; the champagne-and-espagnole deglaze with truffles is characteristic of the period's grand restaurant cooking.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the cooking of Delmonico's in New York at a moment when wild birds arrived by the barrel from market gunners along the Atlantic flyway, and golden and black-bellied plovers were sold by the dozen alongside snipe and woodcock. The "a la Montauban" tag follows the period habit of naming garnishes after places and patrons; Montauban is a town in southwestern France, and such names generally signalled a style rather than a documented origin. Within a generation the trade that made this chapter possible was gone: the shorebird flocks collapsed, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 closed the market for good. Pages like this one are now read chiefly as a record of how much wild protein a nineteenth-century city kitchen took for granted.