No. 277

Puree of Pigeons or Wild Squabs a la Waleski

Puree de Pigeons ou de Pigeons Ramiers a la Waleski

Infuse in half a pint of boiling Madeira wine, some thyme, marjoram, basil, cloves, mace, and pepper corns. Roast four pigeons, remove all their meat, and break up the carcasses, putting them into a saucepan with two quarts of broth, adding a quarter of a pound of onions, quarter of a pound of carrots, and two ounces of celery, all finely minced; salt properly, and let boil for one hour, then strain through a napkin, and return it to a clean saucepan to boil and thicken with two tablespoonfuls of fecula diluted in a little cold water. Pound the meat from the birds with eight hard boiled egg-yolks and one ounce of butter, add some of the broth to this puree to dissolve it, then strain it through a tammy, heat it up without boiling, and add to it the Madeira wine infusion after straining it through a napkin; stir in when ready to serve, two ounces of good butter, then pour it into the soup tureen and serve as garnishing, small cream forcemeat (No. 75) timbales No. 5, cut in two crosswise.

← No. 276 Puree of Partridges or Quails a la d'Henin Soups & Broths No. 278 Puree of Potatoes a la Benton →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic Ranhofer purée soup: a roast-bird stock thickened with starch, enriched with a paste of the pounded meat and hard-boiled yolks, and finished with an aromatic Madeira infusion. The hinge is temperature — once the yolk-and-meat purée goes in, the soup must never boil.

Never let it boil after the purée goes inEight egg yolks will curdle and go grainy at a simmer, and the Madeira's aroma is quickly lost to heat. Hold the finished soup at 160-170F, and add the last two ounces of butter off the heat, swirling until it disappears.
FeculaRanhofer's fécule is a fine starch, usually potato starch. Two tablespoons slaked in cold water will thicken two quarts of broth lightly; cornstarch behaves similarly.
Tammy and napkinA tammy is a worsted straining cloth worked with a wooden spoon — a fine conical strainer pressed with a ladle, or a food mill followed by a chinois, does the same job. The "napkin" strainings are simply a doubled square of clean linen or a few layers of cheesecloth.
Half a pint of MadeiraAn American half pint is one cup. Bring it barely to a boil, pour it over the herbs and spices, cover, and let it stand off the heat 20-30 minutes; a hard boil drives off much of the alcohol and aroma. Use a dry or medium Sercial or Verdelho rather than a sweet Malmsey.
The birdsPigeon ramier is the European wood pigeon, which is not generally available for sale in the United States. Farmed squab, four birds of about a pound each, is the practical substitute; roast at 450F for 15-18 minutes, rest, then take the breast and leg meat for the purée and the frames for the stock.
Broth"Broth" here is the book's general-purpose bouillon. Use two quarts of a mild, lightly salted stock and check the seasoning again at the end, since the carcasses, vegetables and butter all concentrate as it reduces.
GarnishThe cream forcemeat timbales are a cream forcemeat (No. 75) baked in small buttered molds in a water bath, turned out and halved crosswise. A few small quenelles poached in stock give the same effect with far less work.
YieldTwo quarts of broth, reduced and enriched, serves eight to ten as a first course in the small portions this book assumes.

A Little History

This is one of hundreds of dishes in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) carrying the name of a patron or public figure — the tag à la Waleski is generally taken as a rendering of Walewski, the family of Count Alexandre Walewski, Napoleon III's foreign minister, though Ranhofer, who cooked at Delmonico's for more than thirty years, rarely explained his dedications. The dish itself belongs to an older French tradition of the game purée, in which an expensive bird is used twice: the bones and trimmings make the stock, and the meat is pounded to a paste with egg yolk and butter to give body and flavor. The wood pigeon in the title reflects European practice, where ramier was ordinary autumn market game; in New York the same recipe would have been made with domestic squab. The technique — pound, dilute, pass through the tammy, heat without boiling — is in the line of earlier nineteenth-century French practice, and it faded from restaurant kitchens along with the labor needed to do it.