No. 2356

Shells of Squabs Baked

Coquilles de Pigeonneaux Gratinees

After the squabs have been plucked, singed, drawn, well cleaned and boned, divide each one into four or six pieces, according to the size of the bird, then fry these colorless in butter with minced fresh mushrooms; after they are well done, pour off the fat and replace it by allemande sauce (No. 407), adding a little finely cut up chives. Butter some shells (Fig. 438), bestrew the bottoms with a little bread-crumbs and fill them with the squabs; sprinkle more bread-crumbs over mixed with grated parmesan and brown with a salamander or in a hot oven. Instead of bread-crumbing the tops may be covered with chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) and coated with butter, then breaded and browned in the oven, or else cover the shells with a thin flat made of puff paste fragments (No. 146), egg them over twice and bake in a moderate oven.

← No. 2355 Shells of Spinal Marrow or Brains Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2357 Shells of Veal or Lamb Sweetbreads, a la Har →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade kitchen and a stock of numbered mother sauces, but the dish itself is straightforward: a small ragout of boned squab bound in a rich sauce, gratinated in individual shells. The one thing that governs success is not overcooking the birds.

Squab, and what to buyA squab is a young domestic pigeon, four weeks old and never flown, sold today at butchers and by mail order at roughly 14-18 oz each. The meat is dark, tender and lean, and it is dry and livery the moment it passes medium. Two birds give four generous shells.
Boning and "fry colorless"Take the breasts and legs off the carcass raw and cut them into four to six pieces per bird. "Colorless" means cooking in butter over gentle heat without browning; the recipe then says to continue until the pieces are "well done" before the fat is poured off and the sauce added.
Allemande sauceAllemande is classically a velouté of white stock finished with an egg-yolk and cream liaison and a little lemon; No. 407 is a cross-reference not given here. A cup of well-reduced chicken velouté enriched off the heat with a yolk beaten into a few tablespoons of cream stands in closely. Do not let it boil after the yolk goes in.
The shellsCoquilles here are real scallop shells or the silver-plated imitations sold for the purpose; ovenproof gratin dishes or ramekins of about half a cup do the same work. Butter them well, as the crumb layer sticks.
Salamander or hot ovenA salamander was an iron plate heated red and held over the surface. A broiler on high with the shells three or four inches beneath does the job in two or three minutes; if you use the oven instead, "hot" means 425-450F.
Moderate ovenFor the puff-paste-lidded version, moderate is 350-375F, long enough for the pastry to rise and colour, about 20 minutes. The filling only needs reheating, so it should go in warm.
The alternative toppingsNo. 89 is Ranhofer's chicken quenelle forcemeat, a pounded chicken forcemeat; spread or piped over the filling, buttered and breaded as he directs, it puffs and browns. The puff paste "fragments" are simply rerolled trimmings.
Mushrooms and chives"Fresh mushrooms" means fresh as opposed to dried; the cultivated strains available in the 1890s were not today's white button. Mince them fine and let their water cook off before the sauce goes in, or the gratin will be loose.
YieldFour shells as a first course, or two as a light main. Serve immediately; the sauce sets and the crust softens within minutes of leaving the heat.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is the record of that repertoire, cross-referenced like a technical manual so a cook could assemble a dish from numbered components. Coquilles were a fixture of the period's entrée service: a small, hot, richly sauced portion baked and served in its own shell, which solved the problem of getting an individual gratin to the table still bubbling. Squab appears throughout the book, in pies, salmis and dishes like this one. The three finishes Ranhofer offers for the top — crumbs and parmesan, a forcemeat crust, or a lid of puff-paste scraps — are a glimpse of a kitchen economy in which nothing serviceable was thrown away.