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Broiled Squabs, Celery Sauce
Cut open through the back six fresh fat squabs. Draw, singe, wipe dry and nicely flatten with a cleaver. Arrange on a double broiler; season all over with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper; lightly oil on both sides, then broil on a brisk fire for six minutes on each side. Remove, lay on a hot dish with six freshly prepared toasts, pour a celery sauce over and serve.
A spatchcocked bird over live coals, written for a kitchen with a charcoal range and a separate saucier making the sauce. The method transfers cleanly to a gas grill or an overhead broiler.
- What a squab isA young domestic pigeon, killed at about four weeks before it has flown, weighing roughly 12-16 oz whole. It is dark-fleshed and closer to duck than chicken; ordinary pigeon or an older bird will be tough and is not a substitute. Order from a game butcher or online; they are usually sold frozen and already drawn.
- Draw and singeModern squab arrives eviscerated, so "draw" is done for you. Singeing burns off residual pinfeathers and down — a quick pass over a gas flame or with a kitchen torch still works and is worth doing.
- Double broilerNot a double boiler. This is a hinged wire broiler — two grids that clamp the flattened birds between them so they can be turned as a unit over the fire. A hinged fish grill does the same job; without one, weight the birds with a foil-wrapped brick in a heavy pan.
- Brisk fireHot direct heat: coals you can hold a hand over for two seconds, or a broiler element preheated with the rack about 4 inches below it. Anything gentler dries the bird before the skin colours.
- Twelve minutes totalAt this timing the breast meat stays rosy and the juices run pink, and pink squab is common in restaurant cooking today. If you want it cooked through, take the breast to 165F, but expect it to be noticeably drier and liverish.
- Lightly oilUse a neutral oil with a high smoke point, and brush thinly — squab skin renders its own fat and excess oil flares over coals.
- Celery sauceThe book assumes you will turn to its own recipe. In this period the name covers a family of white sauces: celery stewed soft in butter with white stock or milk, sieved or puréed, thickened with a pale roux and often enriched with cream. Season it lightly, since the birds are already salted.
- The toastsPlain toasted or pan-fried white bread, sized to sit under each bird. They catch the juices and the sauce.
- YieldSix squabs, one per person as a main course. Halve everything for three.
Squab appeared regularly on American restaurant and banquet menus in the era this book comes from: commercial pigeon lofts supplied hotels, and broiled, roasted, or braised squab turns up on menus from the 1890s through the 1920s. Part of the appeal was practical — the bird is small enough to cook to order in a few minutes over a hot fire, which suits a kitchen sending out plates one at a time. Celery belongs to the same moment: it was a fashionable vegetable in late-nineteenth-century America, grown blanched, served upright in glass celery vases on the table, and worked into creamed sauces and soups. Pigeon largely dropped out of everyday American cooking in the mid-twentieth century as chicken became cheap and uniform, and squab is now sold mainly through game dealers and Chinese markets, where it is as likely to be roasted whole as broiled and sauced.