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Squabs En Casserole

Squabs are sautéed with onion rings in bacon fat, then baked with bay leaf and broth, finished with peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Squabs En Casserole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the squabs

  1. Clean and truss the squabs.

  2. Sauté the squabs in bacon fat with the onion rings.

Bake

  1. Arrange the squabs in a casserole dish.

  2. Add the bay leaf and half cover with hot water or broth.

  3. Cover and bake until nearly tender.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, skim off the fat and add the cooked peas.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Squab + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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 becomes tender through slow covered baking in liquid.
Bacon fat
Browns the squabs during sautéing and carries flavour into the dish.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness that mellows as it cooks in the fat and liquid.
Hot water or broth
Creates moist steam and gentle braising heat around the squabs in the covered dish.
Peas
Add sweetness and a soft texture stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Covered baking until nearly tender. Squab is a small, lean bird that dries out or toughens if overcooked. Baking covered in hot liquid braises it gently, so it should be checked as it approaches tenderness rather than left to cook hard.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (squab, onion, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against squab, onion, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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