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Squab Pie

A pie made with young pigeons, butter, stock, flour, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Squab Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the squabs

  1. Draw and clean the squabs thoroughly.

  2. Cut them in half by splitting down the back and cutting through the breastbone.

  3. Flatten with the broad side of a cleaver.

Brown and simmer

  1. Dredge with salt and pepper, then roll both sides in flour.

  2. Fry slightly in butter until light brown on both sides.

  3. Add 3 cups of broth or water to the pan and let them simmer until tender.

  4. If the flour hasn't thickened sufficiently, add a little browned flour and season to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into an earthen baking dish and cover with pastry.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Squab + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Squabs
Provide the meat that becomes tender during simmering and forms the body of the pie.
Butter
Browns the dredged squabs and adds richness to the frying stage.
Flour
Coats the squabs for browning and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Stock or water
Simmers the squabs until tender and forms the base of the gravy.
Pastry
Covers the dish to enclose the filling as a crust.

The step that matters

Frying the flour-coated squabs. Frying until light brown on both sides builds color and savory flavor through browning, and the flour coating helps that browning and later thickens the liquid. Frying too long can scorch the flour and make the gravy bitter.

“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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