Broiled Squabs
Prepare, cook and serve the same as quail. If pigeons they should be young for broiling, squabs being the best. All small birds can be broiled according to the directions for quail, remembering that for extremely small ones it takes a very bright fire. As the birds should be only browned, the time required is very brief.
A cross-reference entry that assumes you have already read the quail directions a few pages earlier. What it really tells you is the governing principle for all small birds on a grid: very high heat, very short time, colour rather than doneness as the goal.
- What a squab isA squab is a young domestic pigeon, killed at about four weeks before it has flown, so the flesh is tender and the breast fat. Dressed weight is usually 12-16 oz, which serves one person. Older pigeon is tough and belongs in a braise or a pie, which is exactly the distinction the author is drawing.
- Buying themSquab is sold frozen by game and specialty butchers and by mail order; it is rarely in a supermarket case. Ask for them split and flattened if you would rather not do it yourself.
- Preparing for the grid"Prepare" is not spelled out here; on the model of period broiling directions for small birds it would mean splitting the bird down the back, opening it flat, pressing the breastbone until it cracks, and flattening it under a weight, then brushing with butter or oil and seasoning. A flat bird cooks evenly under fierce heat; a whole one will not.
- A very bright fireFor a cook of this period this meant a bed of coals burned down to clear red with no flame and no smoke. Modern equivalents: a charcoal grill at its hottest, or an oven broiler preheated a full ten minutes with the rack set 3-4 inches below the element. A lukewarm broiler steams the bird grey.
- TimeFlattened squab takes roughly 5-7 minutes a side, skin side first. The recipe's "very brief" is not vague coyness; small birds pass from underdone to dry very quickly, so stay at the grid.
- DonenessSquab is dark-fleshed and has traditionally been served pink at the bone, the way duck breast is. The USDA figure for all poultry is 165F at the thickest part, which will give a firm, fully cooked bird. Decide which you are cooking before you start, since the two differ by only a few minutes.
- "All small birds"The author's cheerful extension to any small bird no longer applies in the United States. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 protects native songbirds and most wild game birds outside licensed seasons, so robins, larks and bobolinks, all of which turn up in cookbooks of this era, are off the table. Farmed squab, quail and poussin are the legal stand-ins.
- ServingPeriod broiling directions for small birds of this kind usually called for buttered toast beneath each bird to catch the juices, with watercress and a wedge of lemon, though this entry does not say so. Allow one squab per person as a course, two if it is the whole of the meal.
Pigeon was among the farmyard meats that survived into the twentieth-century American cookbook, and squab held on partly because it was a luxury: a hotel and dining-car item, expensive enough that the word carried a whiff of the chafing dish. Turn-of-the-century game chapters like this one sit at a hinge point. Their authors still assumed a reader might be handed a brace of wild pigeons, quail or even a dozen small songbirds by a hunting relative, and the passenger pigeon, netted in bulk for market in the previous generation, was within living memory when this book was printed. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 brought market hunting of such birds to an end, and squab became largely a product of the commercial loft, which is how it reaches cooks today. The instruction to brown rather than cook through is the oldest thing on the page: broiling small birds close to a clear fire is long-established practice, and the emphasis on a bright, flameless bed of coals is the one piece of technique that survives every change in the supply chain.