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Beoiled Squabs

Broiled squabs seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper, served on buttered toast with hot stock or gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Squab and butter work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 48 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Beoiled Squabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the squabs down the back.

  2. Rub them all over with butter, then season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the squabs over red coals.

  2. Serve on buttered toast that is moistened with a little hot stock or gravy.

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. Squab + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Squab + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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 through quickly under direct heat when split flat.
Butter
Coats the birds to add richness and help the skin brown during broiling.
Buttered toast
Soaks up the drippings and juices, giving the dish a base to serve on.

The step that matters

Broil the squabs over red coals. Squabs are small and lean, so direct, steady heat is needed to cook them through while browning the skin. Too little heat leaves the skin pale and the meat underdone, and too much dries or chars it.

“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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