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Broiled Squabs with Bacon
Cut off the head and feet at the first joints of six tender, fat squabs. Split open through back without separating, draw, remove breast bone of each, wrap in a coarse towel and neatly flatten with a cleaver. Mix on a plate a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper and a tablespoon oil, then repeatedly roll birds in seasoning. Arrange on a double broiler, broil six minutes on each side, remove, and dress on a hot dish over six freshly prepared pieces of toast. Broil six thin slices bacon two minutes on each side, arrange over squabs, decorate with a little watercress and serve.
A straightforward dish of split young pigeons cooked hard and fast. Everything depends on the flattening and on not overshooting the twelve minutes.
- What a squab isA squab is a young pigeon, roughly four weeks old, sold at about 12–16 oz dressed. Order from a game butcher or online supplier; there is no close supermarket substitute, since a Cornish hen is much paler and milder in the breast and behaves differently on the grill.
- Drawing the birds"Draw" means eviscerate. Squab now arrives cleaned, so you only need to split it through the backbone, open it flat, and lift out the keel and ribs with a small knife.
- The flattening is the pointWrapping in a coarse towel and striking with a cleaver gives an even thickness so the thighs and breast finish together. Press with the heel of your hand or the flat of a heavy pan until the bird lies genuinely level; an unflattened squab will have raw legs and dry breast at the same moment.
- Double broilerThis is a hinged wire basket that clamps the bird between two grids and lets you flip the lot at once over live coals, not a double boiler and not the modern overhead broiler. A grill basket does the same job; a very hot grill or ridged pan works with tongs.
- Heat and timingSix minutes a side assumes a fierce fire, close to the coals. Squab is dark-meated and is traditionally taken off while the breast is still rosy, around 135–140F at the thickest part. Note that USDA guidance for all poultry is 165F, which will give you a fully grey, firm bird.
- The baconTwo minutes a side over the same fire is right for thin-sliced bacon but it will flare and drip. Cook it after the squabs so the fat does not smother the fire while the birds are on.
- Toast and assemblyThe toast is structural: it catches the juices that run out as the birds rest. Use a firm white bread cut thick enough not to collapse, and have the platter genuinely hot.
- YieldSix squabs serve six: the recipe gives each bird its own slice of toast and slice of bacon. Season measurements scale directly.
Squab was ordinary American eating well into the twentieth century, when pigeon lofts were a common feature of farms and city rooftops and the birds were taken before they ever flew, which is why they are tender enough for twelve minutes over coals. Cookbooks of the period treat them as familiar rather than exotic, and the presentation here — split and flattened, laid on toast, capped with bacon and finished with a spray of watercress — is typical of hotel and club cooking of the time; setting small birds on toast to absorb their juices is a much older device. Domestic pigeon keeping declined as commercial chicken production scaled up in the mid-century, and squab shifted from farmhouse fare to an expensive specialty, which is roughly where it sits now.