Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Roast Squab
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Clean the squab by removing pinfeathers and washing thoroughly.
Dry the squab inside and out with cheesecloth.
For the stuffing, mix bread crumbs, poultry seasoning, cayenne, butter, salt, and pepper.
If the stuffing is not moist enough, add a small amount of milk.
Roast
Stuff the squab loosely with the stuffing mixture.
Roast the squab in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Squab + buttertop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together48 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Squab
- The main protein, which is cooked whole and stuffed.
- Bread crumbs
- Absorb butter and moisture to form the body of the stuffing.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, keeping the stuffing moist and browning the skin.
- Milk
- Adds moisture to the stuffing if it is too dry to hold together.
The step that matters
Drying the squab. Patting the bird dry removes surface moisture, which lets the skin brown and crisp in the oven instead of steaming.
“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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