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Squabs, American
Cut off heads and feet from six fat, tender squabs, singe, draw and neatly wipe, then fill with a stuffing a l'Americaine. Truss, arrange a thin slice of larding pork on the breast of each bird, season evenly all around with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Place on a tin, baste each bird with a very little melted butter, set in oven to roast for forty minutes, remove, untruss, arrange six pieces fried hominy on hot dish and lay squabs on top. Broil six thin slices bacon for two minutes on each side, place over squabs, pour a gill hot demi-glace around and serve.
A straightforward roast that assumes a kitchen with larding pork, cooked hominy on hand and demi-glace in the reduction pot. The main adjustment is temperature and timing: squab is a red-meated bird and is at its best well short of forty minutes in a slack oven.
- The hinge: roast hot, rest, and stop earlySquab dries out and turns liverish when cooked through. Roast at 450F for about 15-20 minutes for a 12-14 oz bird, aiming for 135-140F in the breast, then rest 5 minutes. The recipe gives no oven temperature, and its forty minutes suggests a slower, less even oven than a modern one.
- SquabsDomestic pigeon, sold at 12-16 oz dressed, usually already drawn and singed. Order from a game butcher or online supplier; ask for them with feet and heads removed and you skip the first sentence of the recipe entirely.
- Larding porkFresh fatback or a thin sheet of unsmoked salt pork, tied over the breast to shield it. Blanched thin-sliced salt pork or caul fat works; ordinary streaky bacon adds smoke that competes with the bacon garnish laid on later.
- A gillHalf a cup. Poured around the birds, not over them, so the bacon and skin stay crisp.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, half stock and half espagnole in classical terms. Good jarred or frozen demi-glace concentrate is a fair substitute; a cup of dark chicken or veal stock reduced by half with a spoon of butter whisked in at the end will also carry the dish.
- Fried hominyWhole hominy or coarse grits cooked stiff, spread in a pan to set overnight, cut into squares and fried in butter or lard until crusted. It is the American element the title advertises, and it wants to be made a day ahead.
- Stuffing a l'AmericaineThe book expects you to turn to its own stuffing entry; American stuffings for small birds in this period often ran to cornbread or bread crumbs with onion, sage or thyme and butter, though the book's own version may differ. Use only a tablespoon or two per bird, loosely packed, or the cavity slows the roast and the breast overcooks.
- Seasoning and yieldA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of white pepper for six birds is light by current habit; season each bird inside and out. Serves six as a main course, or three generously.
Squab appears constantly in American hotel and restaurant cookery around 1900 because pigeon was a reliable, quick-growing bird that could be raised in urban lofts and sold small and tender, before broiler chickens were an industrial product. The dish is a plain piece of Franco-American hotel construction: French method and vocabulary throughout - truss, bard, roast, finish with demi-glace - with the nationality supplied by the hominy cake and the bacon, which is why it carries the "American" label. Fried hominy or grits set and cut into squares turns up as a garnish for small game birds in the period, filling the role potatoes or polenta play elsewhere. Filippini's International Cook Book (1906), which shares this style of terse professional instruction, was written by a Delmonico's man for cooks who already knew what a stuffing a l'Americaine was and needed only the order of operations.