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Fried Squabs or Doves

A dish of boiled squabs or doves coated in cornmeal and flour and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Fried Squabs or Doves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Boil the birds until tender.

  2. Remove the birds from the broth and dip them in the beaten eggs.

  3. Coat the birds in a mixture of equal parts cornmeal and flour.

Fry

  1. Heat butter and lard in a skillet until very hot.

  2. Fry the birds in the skillet until they are brown.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the coating to the birds so the cornmeal and flour stick during frying.
Cornmeal
Adds a crisp, gritty texture to the coating as it fries.
All-purpose flour
Forms the coating with cornmeal and helps it brown evenly in the hot fat.
Butter and lard
Provide the frying fat, whose heat browns the coating and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the fat until very hot before frying. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of forming a crisp, browned crust. Hot fat sears the surface quickly, sealing in moisture.

“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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