Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Squirrels

Broiled squirrels are cleaned, soaked, broiled, then served with melted butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Squirrels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and soak the squirrels in cold water to draw out the blood.

  2. Wipe them dry and broil on a grill over a clear, hot fire, turning often.

Dress and serve

  1. Once done, place them in a hot dish and dress with plenty of melted butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Let the dish sit between two hot plates for five minutes before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Squirrels
Main protein; the dish is built around cooking the meat over direct heat.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavor over the cooked meat.
Black pepper
Adds sharp aroma and pungent flavor to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Turning often over a clear, hot fire. Frequent turning and a hot fire let the meat brown and cook through evenly without burning the outside. Too little heat or too much flare-up leaves the meat dry or charred in patches.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes