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Baked Squabs

A dish of young pigeon roasted with potatoes, celery, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Squabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dress the squabs with wings clinched and drumsticks tied down.

  2. Place the potatoes and celery in a casserole or baking dish.

Bake

  1. Lay the squabs, breasts down, on top of the mixture, cover, and bake for one hour.

  2. Blend the butter and flour, then spread evenly over the tops of the squabs.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. If further browning is necessary, remove the cover at the end and add additional liquid if desired.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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
The main protein, which cooks through in the covered oven while staying moist.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Flour
Mixed with butter to form a paste that thickens juices and promotes even browning on top.
Potatoes
Absorb juices from the birds and turn tender, soaking up flavor from the pan.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor and moisture to the vegetable bed beneath the squabs.

The step that matters

Covering and checking the browning. Baking covered for the full hour keeps the squab moist, so the cover should come off only near the end to brown the skin. Removing it too early can dry the meat.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against squab, pepper, butter, potato, flour. 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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