Name: Squabs Broiled on Toast, with Bacon
Ingredients: 3 squabs; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ⅛ teaspoon black pepper; 1 tablespoon olive oil; 6 slices of bread, toasted; ½ cup maitre d'hotel butter; 6 slices of bacon

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 ↓

Squabs Broiled on Toast, with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the squabs

Singe, draw, and clean the squabs, cutting off the necks.
Split the squabs without detaching the parts and place them on a dish.
Season with salt, pepper, and olive oil, rolling them well.

Broil and serve

Broil the squabs for 6 minutes on each side.
Prepare a dish with the toasted bread and arrange the squabs on top.
Spread the maitre d'hotel butter over the squabs.
Decorate with the broiled bacon slices and serve.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,263 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Squabs: Provide the main meat, which cooks quickly under high heat and becomes tender.
Maitre d'hotel butter: Adds fat and herb flavor that moistens the squabs and toast as it melts.
Bacon: Adds salty, smoky fat that browns and flavors the dish when broiled.
Bread: Toasted base that soaks up juices and gives the dish a crisp, sturdy structure.

The step that matters

Broiling the squabs for 6 minutes on each side. Broiling uses intense direct heat to brown the skin and cook the meat quickly. Too little time leaves the birds underdone, while too much dries the lean meat, so turning them at the stated time matters.

“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.

Brown Bread461 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

Oatmeal Bread51 recipes

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Squabs Broiled on Toast, with Bacon