No. 2270

Cutlets of Squabs in Papers

Cotelettes de Pigeonneaux en Papillotes

Draw, singe and clean nicely some young pigeons, cut an incision in the skin between the rump and the breast; thrust the legs inside, split the pigeons in two lengthwise and pare them to resemble cutlets, then fry lightly in butter with lemon juice without letting acquire a color; set them under a weight and trim them again into the required shape. Place some oil, grated fat pork, chopped shallot, mushrooms, parsley, salt, allspice and eighth-inch squares of ham into a sautoir; when these ingredients are well fried, but not browned, add some half-glaze sauce (No. 413) and Madeira wine. Coat some heart-shaped sheets of paper with oil, on one of the halves lay a thin slice of fat pork, over this some of the above prepared sauce and then a pigeon cutlet on top, finishing with more of the sauce and a thin slice of cooked ham; fold the empty half of paper over on the full one, pinch the edges well together to enfold all and enclose hermetically, then lay them on a well-buttered dish intended for the table; set it in the oven to brown the paper and heat the cutlet. The paper should swell up; serve as soon as done.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's kitchen exercise in shaping and steaming: the squab halves are trimmed to look like cutlets, then finished sealed in oiled paper so the sauce perfumes the bird as it heats. The one thing to get right is the seal — if the edges of the paper are not crimped tightly the packet will not inflate and the flavor escapes with the steam.

SquabsA squab (pigeonneau) is a young domestic pigeon, sold dressed at 12-16 oz. They are stocked by game butchers and Asian markets; frozen ones are fine. "Draw and singe" means gut it and burn off the pinfeathers, both of which the butcher has already done.
SautoirA straight-sided sauté pan or shallow saucepan, not a sauté pan in the sloped sense. Anything wide enough to fry the pork, shallot and mushrooms in a single layer works.
Grated fat porkUnsmoked salt pork or fatback, grated on a box grater while very cold so it melts evenly. Not bacon, which brings smoke the dish does not want. The "thin slice of fat pork" laid under each cutlet should be sliced nearly translucent — a slice of fatback or lardo.
Half-glaze sauceRanhofer's No. 413 is demi-glace: espagnole reduced with brown stock. A good reduced veal or chicken stock, thickened slightly, stands in. You want no more than a few tablespoons per packet; a loose sauce will soak the paper through.
AllspiceUsed here as a whisper, a pinch of ground berry, in the older European manner where allspice sat alongside pepper as a warm seasoning rather than a baking spice.
WeightPressing the fried halves under a plate with a weight flattens them so they hold the cutlet shape and cook evenly in the packet; the recipe gives no duration. Do not skip it; the second trimming is what makes the shape read as a cutlet.
PapersParchment, folded and cut as a heart, coated with oil as the recipe directs. The book gives no oven temperature or timing, only 'set it in the oven to brown the paper and heat the cutlet'. Serve it on the same dish it baked in and let each person open their own.
DonenessThe initial fry is deliberately colorless and brief, so the oven does the cooking. Squab is traditionally served pink at the breast; current food-safety guidance for all poultry is 165F throughout, which will take the bird well past that stage. Decide which you are following before you set the timer.
YieldTwo cutlets per squab. Count two packets as a main course, one as an entrée in a longer menu.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house style plainly: a small bird disguised as something else, plated in a form the dining room would recognize. Cooking en papillote "as a heart so the crimped edge runs unbroken around the curve " is generally traced to eighteenth-century French practice, where oiled paper protected delicate items from direct fire heat and later, in a closed oven, trapped steam and aroma. Squabs are often said to have been a fairly common item in nineteenth-century American markets rather than a luxury, though how far that held in a Delmonico's context is uncertain; domestic pigeons were raised in lofts for the table, and wild pigeons were shot and shipped by the barrel until the passenger pigeon collapsed toward extinction in the same decades this book was written. The insistence on paring the halves "to resemble cutlets" is worth noticing: Ranhofer's kitchen was constantly translating humble material into the vocabulary of the côtelette, which the carriage trade knew how to order.