Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Compote of Squabs
Compote of Squabs
Singe, draw, and truss with their legs thrust inside six fine, fat squabs, lay them in a saucepan with one-half ounce of butter, and a chopped carrot and chopped onion. Season with one pinch of salt, put the lid on the pan, and cook on a good fire for ten minutes. Put in a saucepan six small glazed onions, one medium-sized carrot, cut with a vegetable scoop one ounce of salt pork cut into small pieces, and six cut-up mushrooms; moisten them with one pint of Spanish sauce, and cook together for thirty minutes. Transfer the squabs to this mixture, and cook again for five minutes. Dress the garnishing on a hot dish, arrange the squabs on top, and serve.
Squabs, Crapaudine Singe and draw six tender squabs, splitting them through the back without entirely dividing them; break the bones of the legs and wings, flatten them well and lay them on a dish, season with one pinch of salt, one pinch of pepper and two tablespoonfuls of oil, roll them in well, then dip them in breadcrumbs, and broil slowly for seven or eight minutes on each side. Arrange them on a hot dish, and serve with one-half pint of hot Robert sauce, to which should be added three chopped mushrooms. Serve the sauce on a dish with the squabs on top.
Two squab preparations run together on one page: a braise finished in a garnished sauce, and a split-and-broiled version in the crapaudine style. Both assume a kitchen brigade with stock pots already going.
- The sauce is the whole job"Spanish sauce" is sauce espagnole — brown veal stock thickened with a dark roux and flavored with mirepoix and tomato, reduced over hours. Robert sauce in the second recipe is a demi-glace finished with onion, white wine and mustard. Neither can be improvised at the last minute; make or buy the brown sauce a day ahead or the recipe collapses.
- SquabsYoung domestic pigeon, four weeks old, sold dressed at 12–16 oz. Order from a game butcher or online supplier. "Singe, draw and truss" means burning off pinfeathers over a flame and removing the innards — modern birds arrive cleaned, so skip to trussing.
- DonenessSquab is dark-meated and classical French service leaves it pink; chefs typically pull the breast at about 130-135F, which is well below the 165F usually recommended for poultry and carries the usual risk of undercooked bird. The braise gives fifteen minutes total (ten in the pan, five in the sauce), short for anything larger but consistent with a bird this small; cooked further, the breast goes dry and liver-like.
- "A good fire"Brisk heat with the lid on, so the birds sweat and color in butter rather than stewing. Medium-high on a gas burner. Half an ounce of butter for six birds is one tablespoon; add another if the pan looks dry.
- Vegetable scoopA small melon baller; the carrot is cut into small balls for the sake of appearance in the garnish. Turned or diced carrot does the same work.
- Glazed onionsPeeled pearl or small boiling onions simmered in water, butter and a little sugar until the liquid reduces to a shining coat. Prepare them before they go into the sauce pan; they are not meant to cook from raw in the espagnole.
- Crapaudine broilingSeven or eight minutes a side under a broiler or over coals will scorch dry breadcrumbs before the thighs are done. Keep the birds well away from the element, oiled as directed, and turn once — the crumbs should toast, not blacken.
- Salt porkUnsmoked cured pork belly. Blanch the diced pieces two minutes and drain before adding, or the finished sauce will be aggressively salty on top of the espagnole's own reduction.
- YieldSix birds, one per person as a main course; six servings.
Squab was standard on American hotel menus in Oscar Tschirky's day in a way it no longer is: pigeons were raised commercially in lofts and squabbers supplied the New York markets by the crate, so a chef could generally count on a supply of tender young birds. Crapaudine comes from the French for toad — a bird split through the back, flattened and splayed for the grill is said to resemble a squatting toad, and the term has been applied to pigeon in French kitchens since the nineteenth century. Both recipes here follow the classical French pattern that governs most of this book: the protein is cooked quickly and simply, and the character of the dish comes from a mother sauce built elsewhere in the kitchen, which is why a two-line garnish list can carry so much weight.