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Stewed Squabs
(Piccioni in umido) Garnish the squabs with whole sage leaves and place them in a saucepan over a bed of small slices of ham containing both lean and fat, season with salt, pepper and olive oil. Place on the fire and when they begin to be browned, add a piece of butter and complete the cooking by pouring in some good broth. Before removing from the fire squeeze one lemon over them and garnish with squares or diamonds of toasted bread. Take care not to add too much salt on account of the ham and the broth both containing salt.
Note-Many of these dishes, it will be noticed, are made with broth. When meat broth is not available, it can be prepared with bouillon cubes or with Liebig or Armour Extracts. It is, however, always preferable to use broth made with fresh meat. 48
A straightforward braise in the in umido style, written for cooks who already knew how long a pigeon takes. The details worth pinning down are the bird itself, the vague fat and liquid quantities, and the salt.
- SquabA young domestic pigeon, slaughtered before it flies, usually 12-16 oz dressed. Butchers who handle game and better poultry suppliers carry them frozen; two birds serve two people as a main course, or four as a middle course. Cornish hens are the usual substitute, though they are blander and need a few minutes longer.
- The hinge: keep the pan barely moistIn umido means damp, not submerged. Add the broth in small additions so the liquid stays about a third of the way up the birds; the point is a concentrated glaze at the end, not a soup. If the pan runs dry before the birds are done, add more broth rather than water.
- TimingBrown the squabs on all sides over medium-high heat, 8-10 minutes, then cover and cook gently 20-30 minutes until the thigh joint moves freely and the juices at the leg run clear. Squab breast is often served rosy in restaurants, but a braise like this one is cooked through by design.
- "A piece of butter"Read this as 2 tablespoons, added after the initial browning so it does not scorch in the olive oil.
- The sageWhole fresh leaves; the recipe says to garnish the birds with them but does not say where they go, so tucking them against the skin or inside the bird is a reasonable reading. Fresh leaves hold up better than dried, which can go dusty over a long braise.
- SaltThe warning is real. Prosciutto or pancetta plus reduced broth will carry the dish; salt only at the end, after the lemon goes in.
- Broth and the note on extractsLiebig's and Armour's meat extracts were thick brown pastes sold in jars, the ancestors of today's bouillon concentrates. Modern cubes and pastes are considerably saltier than homemade stock, so if you use one, dilute it well past label strength and taste before adding any salt at all.
- The bread garnishCrostini cut into diamonds or squares as the recipe directs, toasted and arranged around the birds to soak up the pan juices. Cut and toast them while the squabs rest so they stay crisp.
This comes from Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919), one of a number of English-language collections that presented regional Italian home cooking to American readers, in a period when Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina had done much to standardize Italian domestic cookery a generation earlier. In umido, literally "in the damp," is the standing Italian term for a covered braise with a small amount of liquid, distinct from in brodo (in broth) or arrosto (roasted). Pigeons were a normal part of the Italian rural larder rather than a luxury: towers and cotes kept birds that could be taken young at any season, which is why they turn up so casually in period cookbooks alongside chicken. The closing note on Liebig's and Armour's extracts places the book in the long era when commercial meat concentrates had become respectable in middle-class kitchens, and when an author still felt obliged to apologize for recommending them.