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Squabs, a L'Estouffade
Singe, draw, wipe and truss six fat squabs. Place them in an earthen coccotte dish, one beside another. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Glaze the breasts with a very little melted butter. Set in the oven to roast for fifteen minutes, turning over once in a while and occasionally basting with their own gravy. With a small Parisian potato scoop dig out all you can from two medium, red carrots, and two medium, sound, raw, peeled potatoes and keep separately. Place the carrots in a small saucepan with half ounce melted butter, adding one gill cold water. Season with two saltspoons salt and a saltspoon white pepper and boil for five minutes; then set the pan in the oven to braise for fifteen minutes. Remove and keep warm till required. Plunge the potatoes into boiling fat and fry for five minutes. Thoroughly drain, sprinkle half a teaspoon salt over them and keep in a hot place. Prepare the same amount glazed onions, and also keep separately. Chop up very finely four sound shallots and place all around the squabs; then place the glazed onions in the centre of the squabs and arrange the carrots and potatoes, alternately, around. Pour one gill hot demi-glace, on the breasts of the squabs; tightly cover the cocottiere and place it in the oven for fifteen minutes. Remove and send to the table without uncovering.
A Delmonico-style braise dressed as a garnished roast: the birds get a hot start, then finish sealed under a lid with their vegetables. Everything hangs on the birds not overcooking in that second stage.
- SquabA squab is a young pigeon, about four weeks old, sold dressed at 12-16 oz. Butchers and game suppliers carry them frozen; six fat ones will serve six as a main course, or three generously.
- No oven temperature is givenThe book leaves the setting to the cook's judgment. As a modern approximation, roast uncovered at around 425F for the first fifteen minutes to colour the breasts, then cover and finish at around 350F.
- Watch the second fifteen minutesSquab is at its best rosy at the breast, around 130-135F, and turns dry and livery well before it looks done. Thirty minutes total is the outer limit for a bird under a pound; check with an instant-read thermometer before the lid goes back on.
- Cocotte, coccotte, cocottiereCoccotte, cocottiere -- the two spellings in the text mean the same thing: a lidded earthenware (or, today, enamelled cast-iron) casserole. The recipe directs that it go to the table still covered, unopened.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), used here twice -- once for the carrot water, once for the demi-glace. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- Parisian potato scoopA melon baller, in the small size. The point is uniform spheres that cook evenly and look deliberate; scraps go to stock rather than into the dish.
- Demi-glaceClassically espagnole sauce combined with brown stock and reduced by half. Good jarred or frozen demi-glace is sold now, or reduce a cup of strong brown stock to half a cup and thicken lightly.
- Glazed onions, unexplainedThe book expects you to know: small peeled pearl onions simmered in butter, a little sugar and just enough water to cover, until the liquid reduces to a glossy coating. Make roughly the same volume as the carrots and potatoes.
- Raw shallots at the endFour finely chopped shallots scattered around the birds cook only during the covered fifteen minutes. Sweat them briefly in butter first if you would rather not have their raw edge in the sauce.
Estouffade comes from the French étouffer, to smother or stifle, and describes what happens here: the food is shut into a tightly covered vessel so nothing escapes but steam. The same root gives Louisiana its étouffée. Squab was common in grand American restaurant cookery around 1900 -- pigeons were raised commercially for the table -- and the sealed dish is carried to the table unopened, as the recipe's closing instruction directs. The precision of this version, with its saltspoons, its Parisian scoop and its demi-glace assumed to be standing ready, reflects a professional hotel and restaurant kitchen rather than a domestic one.