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Broiled Squab
Prepare them the same as a spring chicken; split down the back, flatten the breast, wipe inside and out with a damp cloth. Put on a broiler, season with pepper and salt and when nicely broiled, pour melted butter over them. Serve on toast.
A four-line recipe that assumes you know what a broiler is, how big a squab is, and how long it takes. Here is what it leaves out.
- What a squab isA squab is a young domestic pigeon, killed at about four weeks before it has flown, so the flesh is dark, tender and all but fat-free. Dressed weight is usually 12-16 oz, which feeds one person. Order from a butcher or game supplier; supermarkets rarely carry them.
- "Broiler" means a hinged wire grillIn 1911 this was a two-sided wire basket set over coals or in front of a coal range's fire, turned by hand. The modern equivalent is a hot grill or an oven broiler with the rack about 4 inches from the element, or a heavy ridged pan on the stove.
- Splitting and flatteningCut down either side of the backbone with shears, open the bird out, and press hard on the breastbone until it cracks flat. Flattening is the whole point: it puts breast and leg in the same plane so they cook at one rate.
- TimingThe recipe gives none. Figure roughly 6-8 minutes a side under a hot broiler, skin side last so it finishes crisp, and judge by the bird rather than the clock. Squab is small and cooks faster than a chicken of comparable weight.
- DonenessSquab is conventionally served with the breast rosy, around 135-140F at the thickest point, while the legs go further. Cooked through to 165F, as poultry guidance directs, the breast turns dry and livery. Decide which you want before you start, and be aware the two aims are not compatible.
- The butterMelted butter poured over at the end is doing the work of a sauce. Warm it with the squab's juices and a little lemon; salt it after melting so it does not taste flat.
- The toastThe bird sits on the toast so the slice catches the juices; with small game birds the toast was sometimes spread with the mashed liver and heart, though this recipe says nothing of it. Use a sturdy bread that will not collapse.
- YieldOne bird per person as a main course, half a bird as a first course.
Pigeon was for centuries the most ordinary of luxury meats: manorial and farm dovecotes supplied squab as a matter of course, and the birds fed themselves largely on scavenged grain. By the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book in 1911, American squab was a commercial product, raised in lofts and shipped to city markets, and it reads as a smart, small, quickly cooked dish for a light supper or a hotel breakfast. The instruction to "prepare them the same as a spring chicken" is the kind of cross-reference such books used to teach a technique once rather than repeat it. Broiling split birds on toast was a common treatment for small tender birds at the time, applied to spring chicken, quail and plover alike; the toast was practical, not decorative, since a rack-broiled bird drips and the bread caught what the platter otherwise wasted.