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Roast Squirrels
Clean the squirrels thoroughly, wash in several waters and lay for an hour on a platter covered with olive oil mixed with lemon juice or a little tarragon vinegar. Soak a cup of bread crumbs in just enough thick cream to moisten them, add a cup of button mushrooms cut in dice, pepper, salt and onion juice. Stuff each squirrel with this mixture, sew and truss as you would a fowl. Rub with butter, place in dripping-pan and nearly cover with brown stock diluted with a cup of boiling water. When the squirrels are well roasted, make a gravy out of the liquor in the pan, by adding a teaspoon of worcestershire sauce, and paprika, salt and lemon juice to taste.
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A braise-roast in all but name: the pan liquid does most of the work, so the temperature matters more than the recipe lets on. The book gives no oven setting and no timing at all.
- Oven and timingWith the pan nearly filled with stock this is closer to a braise-roast than a dry roast; a moderate oven, around 325-350F, suits it. Young squirrels may take about an hour and a quarter, older ones two hours or more, and they are done when the hind leg meat pulls easily from the bone. Game is judged by tenderness, not by a chart.
- Doneness temperatureSquirrel is a wild rodent and should be cooked through: 165F at the thickest part of the thigh, with the stuffing reaching the same. Do not treat it like a rare-served game bird.
- Handling raw squirrelTularemia is a real risk in wild rabbits and squirrels. Wear gloves when cleaning and washing, wash boards and knives in hot soapy water afterward, and discard any animal that seemed sick or sluggish when taken. Thorough cooking deals with the meat itself.
- Age of the animalThe recipe assumes young squirrels. An older one has tough, sinewy legs and will not become tender by roasting alone; it wants a long, moist braise or the stewpot. Thin, flexible claws and soft ears are the traditional signs of a young animal.
- Brown stockThis means a stock made from browned bones and vegetables. A good unsalted beef stock is the closest substitute; salt the gravy only at the end, since the pan liquid reduces considerably.
- Onion juiceGrate half an onion on the fine side of a box grater and use the liquid that collects, about a teaspoon or two. It gives onion flavour without wet pieces in the stuffing.
- Button mushroomsAt the time these were small whole cultivated white mushrooms, often sold tinned. Fresh white or cremini, diced, work as written; if using tinned, drain and rinse them or the stuffing turns briny.
- Stuffing volumeA cup of soaked crumbs and a cup of mushrooms will fill three or four squirrels. Any surplus can be baked alongside in a small dish rather than packed tight, which slows cooking of the cavity.
- YieldOne squirrel per person for a main course; a dressed animal yields only a modest amount of meat, much of it on the hind legs and back.
- The gravyStrain the pan liquid, skim the fat, and reduce before adding the Worcestershire, paprika and lemon. The recipe calls for no flour, relying on reduction of the pan liquor.
Squirrel was standard American table meat well into the twentieth century, which is why a mainstream domestic manual like the Butterick book files it among the poultry and game without comment. It is often said to be the original meat of Brunswick stew, and nineteenth-century cookbooks treat gray squirrel as a familiar fall and winter dish, cheap and available to anyone with a gun and a stand of hickory or oak. What is striking here is the treatment: an oil and lemon marinade, a cream-and-mushroom forcemeat, Worcestershire and paprika in the gravy. This is a wild animal being dressed in the vocabulary of hotel cookery, aimed at a reader who might be given squirrels by a hunting relative and want them to arrive at the table looking like something from a restaurant menu.