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To Barbecue Squirrel
Put some slices of fat bacon in an oven. Lay the squirrel on them and lay two slices of bacon on the top. Put them ir the oven and let them cook until done. Lay them on a dish and set near the fire. Take out the bacon, sprinkle one spoonful of flour in the gravy and let it brown. Then pour in one teacup of water, one tablespoonful of butter, and some tomato or walnut catsup. Let it cool, and then pour it over the squirrel.
A hearth recipe that translates directly to a covered pot, provided you read "oven" as the vessel rather than the appliance. Two details in the text need correcting before you start.
- "An oven" means a Dutch oven"An oven" most likely means a Dutch oven -- in books of this period the word often denotes a lidded cast-iron pot set among coals with more coals heaped on the lid. Use a heavy covered pot or braiser, either on the stovetop over low heat or in a modern oven at around 325F.
- "Let it cool" is a misprint"Let it cool" is almost certainly a misprint for "cook" or "boil" -- flour browned in fat, then liquid added and simmered until it thickens. Cooling it would leave you pouring raw-tasting paste over the meat. Simmer two or three minutes after the water goes in.
- Old squirrel versus youngThe recipe gives no time, only "until done." A young squirrel will cook through in well under an hour; an older animal needs considerably longer, covered, with a little water in the pot, or the meat stays tough.
- DonenessWild game should reach 165F at the thickest part of the thigh. Squirrel is very lean, so the bacon above and below is structural rather than decorative — without it the meat dries out well before it is tender.
- A teacupNot a modern mug; period usage puts it somewhere between a gill (4 fl oz) and about three-quarters of a cup. Broth or stock gives a better gravy than water.
- Walnut catsupA dark, salty condiment made from green walnuts with spices, and in many recipes anchovies; it was a standard bottled ketchup of the period and is now made by only a few specialist producers. Worcestershire or a mushroom ketchup stands in for it; if you use modern tomato ketchup, use less, since it is far sweeter than the nineteenth-century article.
- YieldOne squirrel is a single serving, or two small ones with sides. The recipe's shift to the plural ("lay them on a dish") suggests more than one animal was often cooked at a time.
- Cleaning and dressingThe book assumes the animal arrives skinned and jointed. Check carefully for shot before cooking, and discard any deeply bruised flesh.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, treats squirrel as an unremarkable everyday meat, which for much of the nineteenth-century South it was — abundant, free to anyone with a gun, and the basis of the original Brunswick stew before chicken displaced it. "Barbecue" here seems to carry an older and broader sense than the smoke-and-sauce meaning that hardened later. The walnut catsup called for at the end points to an English inheritance still alive in Virginia kitchens: green walnuts salted and pressed into a black, savory liquor, a bottled condiment made in season and drawn on all year for gravies like this one.