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Broiled Squirrel

A squirrel roasted in butter and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Squirrel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the squirrel thoroughly.

  2. Place it in a meat pan.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Add a lump of butter and a little water to the pan.

Cook

  1. Cook in the oven on the upper rack until tender, basting often.

  2. If not tender, parboil first.

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

Squirrel
Is the main protein, which becomes tender and browned through slow oven cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture to the pan, helping keep the meat from drying and promoting browning.

The step that matters

Cook in the oven on the upper rack until tender, basting often.. Squirrel is lean and tough, so it needs gentle, sustained heat and frequent basting to keep moisture in the meat. Judging tenderness by appearance alone can lead to undercooked or dry meat.

“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.

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