Squabs
Clean the squabs, put in each one-half of a teaspoonful of butter and two chopped Pim Olas. Truss neatly, roast in a hot oven and serve on heart bread croutons.
A four-line recipe that assumes you know what a squab is, what Pim Olas were, and how hot a hot oven runs. Here is the missing information.
- SquabA young domestic pigeon, killed before it flies, dressed weight roughly 12-16 oz. Sold frozen by game and specialty butchers; one bird is a generous single serving. Cornish game hens are the usual substitute but are leaner in the leg and blander.
- Pim OlasAn early twentieth-century trade name for pimiento-stuffed green olives, then still novel enough to be sold under a brand rather than a description. Any pitted green olive stuffed with pimiento does the job; chop two per bird as directed.
- A hot oven425-450F. Squab wants high heat and a short stay so the breast stays rosy and the skin crisps; a moderate oven dries the bird out before it colours.
- TimingThe recipe gives none. At 450F a trussed squab takes about 15-20 minutes. Traditional practice serves the breast pink, at roughly 135-140F internal; if you want the USDA poultry figure of 165F, expect firmer, drier meat.
- The seasoning is insideHalf a teaspoon of butter and the chopped olives are the entire flavouring, working from the cavity outward. Salt and pepper the skin before it goes in, and brush the breast with more butter, or the bird arrives at the table underseasoned.
- Heart bread croutonsSlices of stale white bread cut with a heart-shaped cutter and fried in butter until golden, a standard garnish for small game birds of the period. They sit under the bird to catch the juices; make them ahead and keep them warm.
- TrussingWorth doing with a bird this small. Legs tied close to the body keep the stuffing in and stop the thin drumsticks overcooking before the breast is done.
- YieldOne squab per person, whether as a main course or as a game course in a longer meal.
Squab is often grouped with game in American cookbooks of this period even though the birds were farmed rather than shot, a survival of the older category of small birds served whole. Pigeon lofts were common on farms, and by 1900 commercial squab raising was a recognised minor industry supplying hotels and restaurants, where a whole small bird on a fried crouton was a standard game-course presentation borrowed from French practice. The Pim Olas in the cavity suggest an approximate period for the recipe: pimiento-stuffed olives were an imported Spanish product marketed hard in the United States around the turn of the century, and cookbook writers used the brand name as shorthand the way a later generation would write Jell-O. The heart-shaped crouton belongs to the same moment, when garnish was expected to be shaped as well as cooked.