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Squabs En Casserole, with Grapes
Carefully draw and wipe the inside of six fine fat squabs. Singe, truss and cover the breasts with a thin slice of lard. Lay them in an earthen casserole dish, and pour in one tablespoon melted butter; season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Place the pan in the oven and roast for forty minutes, turning over once in a while. Remove, place on a hot dish, remove the lard, untruss, skim the fat from the surface of the gravy, place the casserole on the fire, add six finely chopped shallots and one teaspoon chopped parsley. Mix all well and cook for one minute. Then arrange the squabs again in the dish, drop in half gill Malaga wine or claret, and half gill hot demi-glace. Scoop out as much as possible from two large peeled potatoes with a small Parisian potato scoop, cook in two tablespoons melted butter for twenty minutes, drain, season with half teaspoon salt and place them in a cluster in the pan with the squabs, as a bouquet. Heat in a frying pan one tablespoon melted butter, adding thirty white grapes, and cook them to a nice golden colour; add them to the squabs, also as a bouquet. Heat half a pint canned green peas in a half tablespoon butter, season with two saltspoons salt, a saltspoon salt, a saltspoon pepper and a saltspoon sugar, toss them well and add as another bouquet. Cover the pan and let cook for five minutes. Then send the casserole to the table without disturbing the bouquets.
A French-service roast dressed up as a one-pot dish: the four garnishes are meant to stay in separate clusters, so the pot arrives looking arranged rather than stewed. Everything hinges on not overcooking birds that weigh under a pound.
- The casseroleAn earthen casserole here is a lidded earthenware pot that goes from oven to stovetop to table, not a modern baking dish. A heavy enamelled cast-iron cocotte does the same work; the recipe assumes you will put it directly over the flame after roasting.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Forty minutes at a brisk roasting heat is what the method implies, but small birds can cook through well before the clock runs out. Check early rather than trusting the timing.
- SquabsYoung domestic pigeon, roughly 12-16 oz each, sold frozen from game suppliers and some butchers. Six birds serve six as a course; the original expects one bird per person.
- "A thin slice of lard"This means barding fat -- a sheet of firm pork back fat laid over the breast, not rendered lard. Sliced fatback or unsmoked streaky bacon works; it is removed before saucing, so smoke flavour would intrude.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 4 tablespoons. A saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. The pea seasoning line is garbled in the original by a typesetter's repetition; read it as roughly half a teaspoon salt with a pinch each of pepper and sugar.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, thick enough to coat. A good commercial demi-glace concentrate or a strongly reduced homemade brown stock stands in; a thin canned broth will not give the gloss the dish depends on.
- Parisian potato scoopA melon baller. Twenty minutes in butter over low heat cooks the balls through without colouring them much; keep the heat gentle or they brown before the centres soften.
- The grapesSeedless green grapes, peeled if you want the period effect. They want a minute or two in hot butter to blister and colour -- longer and they collapse into the sauce, which defeats the bouquet.
- PeasCanned peas are already cooked; frozen peas heated through in butter for a minute are closer to what the dish wants and will hold their shape during the final five covered minutes.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and this recipe shows the house style: a French repertoire built for American dining rooms, where the garnitures are set out in separate bouquets so the waiter can serve each guest a bird with a spoonful of each. Squab was ordinary restaurant meat in 1900 in a way it is not now -- pigeons were raised commercially for the table, and the small, dark-breasted birds suited the rich reduced sauces of the period. Grapes with small birds is a long-standing French pairing, associated with the autumn shooting season, when quail and thrush were cooked with the vintage fruit; the Malaga wine here points the same direction, toward sweetness set against dark stock. The dish is a good measure of how much labour a well-staffed kitchen could spend on one course: three separate pans of garnish, all so that the pot could reach the table undisturbed.