No. 2115

Plovers a la Stoughton

Pluviers a la Stoughton

Draw the plovers, singe, clean and poeler them as for No.12; after wrapping them in thin bards of fresh fat pork tying each one on with three rows of string. Fry the intestines in butter, carefully suppressing the gizzard and stomach pouch, drain off the butter and replace it by Madeira and brown sauce (No.414). Then simmer for a few minutes; pass it through a tammy and add to it some foies-gras escalops, truffles and cocks'-combs; dress the plovers in a low croustade made of tart paste (No.149) and pour over the garnishing.

← No. 2114 Plovers a la Montauban Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2116 Plovers a la Parny—Breasts →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's plover dishes belong to a market-gunning era that ended by law. The recipe is readable as a document; it is not cookable.

The bird is protectedPlovers are migratory shorebirds covered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the United States, where they cannot be shot, sold, bought or served. Protection elsewhere varies: golden plover remains a listed quarry species in parts of the UK and EU, while lapwing and most other plovers are fully protected. In no case is there a commercial supply for the table.
The trail is the point, and the problemThe recipe draws the birds, then fries the intestines separately in butter, discarding the gizzard and stomach pouch, and works them into the sauce: a classic treatment for small game birds. Even setting the legal question aside, cooking a wild bird's gut in butter is a route to Campylobacter and Salmonella that modern practice does not accept.
Cocks' combsOnce a standard garnish in nineteenth-century kitchens. No commercial supply exists in most countries now, and they are not something to improvise.
PoelerRanhofer's No. 12: the bird is set on a bed of vegetables in a covered pan with plenty of butter and cooked in the oven, basted often, so it steams and roasts at once. Closer to pot-roasting than to roasting proper.
BardsThin sheets of fresh back fat, tied on to keep lean birds from drying. "Fresh fat pork" means unsalted, uncured fatback, not bacon.
TammyA worsted straining cloth, twisted between two people to force the sauce through. A fine chinois with a ladle is the modern equivalent.
Croustade of tart pasteA shallow baked pastry case built to hold the birds and their garnish, made from Ranhofer's tart paste No. 149.
If you want the flavourUse a current recipe for a farmed game bird from a licensed supplier. Do not adapt this one.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) records the repertoire of a house that could buy anything the American market offered. In the 1880s and 1890s that included barrels of shorebirds shipped in from the Atlantic flyway; golden plover and its relatives arrived at the game stalls in quantity, cheap enough to be a routine restaurant bird, and the pressure was severe enough that the Eskimo curlew, netted and shot from the same flocks, collapsed to near-extinction within a generation. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 ended the trade. Ranhofer gives a number of plover preparations, distinguished mainly by garnish and named in the fashion of the period after patrons, places and public figures; the identity behind "a la Stoughton" is not recorded in the book, and it is safer to read these names as house labels than as biography. The technique itself — barding a small lean bird, poeling it, and making the sauce from its own trail — is the standard French treatment for woodcock and snipe, applied here to a bird that no longer belongs on a menu.