# Talk:Squab pie

Just letting you know, I just started the stub because I saw the red link in this article. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 19:07, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

After I edited the text around that Dickens quote (I changed "described it as..." to "said it was..."), I looked at All The Year Round, where it's made clear that most of the contributors to that publication weren't acknowledged. So should that quote actually be so clearly attributed to Dickens (or Wilkie Collins)?  - unless Ella Ann Oppenlander said so.[1] Perhaps "it was described in Dickens' All The Year Round as..." would be safer?  —SMALLJIM  13:09, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Good question, I'm not certain what's best here. Chances are that Dickens didn't write it himself, so it might be better to change to the latter. In fact... I will do just that. Worm 09:25, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

There are some problems with the section that reads: "Although it appears that squab pie did originally contain pigeons,[4] mutton and apples have been used as a substitute since at least 1772[5] and it was featured in a recipe book in 1784[6] using a recipe that has remained in cookbooks for years afterwards.[7]"
The 1784 reference is to Hannah Glasse and her book Art of Cookery.  Glasse is well known for not originating her recipes, instead taking them from already published books.  (An example can be seen in her recipe for calf's chitterlings [2], which is a verbatim repetition of an earlier recipe.  I have found it in a 1737 English cookery book (The lady's companion: or, An infallible guide to the fair sex  [3], and there are probably earlier versions yet that I haven't come across in my brief Google Books search.  Hannah Glasse's 1784 version is identical.)
Hannah was up to her old tricks with the squab pie recipe: she has clearly taken it from the same 1737 book as above [4] and there may well be even earlier yet versions in other books that I haven't come across.
So 

a) squab pie with mutton predates 1772 by at least 35 years
and 

b) please don't give Hannah Glasse any of the credit for that particular recipe!
86.136.24.112 (talk) 08:55, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi 86. I've incorporated the earlier reference, thanks for finding that, and I've moved the citations around so that it now says "Although it appears that squab pie did originally contain pigeons,[4]  mutton and apples have been used as a substitute since at least 1737[5]  using a recipe that has remained in cookbooks for years afterwards.[6][7]" It still does include Hannah Glasse's recipe, as people may be interested in reading other cookbooks from the period, but it doesn't imply that she wrote the recipe. Hope that covers everything! Worm 09:16, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
Looks good to me! 86.136.24.112 (talk) 10:05, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello Worm.
Squabs are young pigeons of any sort, not just domesticated. The squab we had when I was a child was wood-pigeon, which I used to collect, with a couple of friends, and we would take them home for eating. (I used to give them to Gran or Mum, who would have everything else ready to make a pie when I got back!) We used to go round the fields with long sticks & poke the pigeons nests & squabs out of the willows & low elm & oak branches, & earn a bit of pocket-money from the farmer. 

Nice photo in the article, & congrats on the GA... I will make a squab pie, but my phone has a fuzzy lens, & I have no other camera, else I would upload a pic. My real problem is getting hold of mutton. My butcher doesn't get it.  Archolman 22:52, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Well, good luck on making the pie - I'd be interested in knowing how tasty it is! I think that the definition of squab has changed over the years, and I've just gone by the sources. I don't doubt that you're right, but we'd need a source confirming it. WormTT · (talk) 08:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Squab (food) says "The word squab was formerly used to describe young birds from several species, but has since come to mean young pigeons and their meat."
"Squab: a young pigeon from 1-30 days old" 
UT Arlington: 
"pigeon" is Norman, "dove" is Saxon. But complications immediately arise. We know from Ivanhoe that the basic principle of Norman/Saxon animal naming should mean that the Norman name is food and the Saxon name is not: Beef/cow, pork/pig, veal/calf. But nobody eats "pigeon." In fact fried pigeon is usually called "squab," at least in America. And "squab" is probably a Saxon word as well.[Well, there's another layer of complication; like all kinds of knowledge, etymology is fractal, often twisting through more contradictions as you look closer at the pattern. "Dove" and "squab" are apparently not originally Anglo-Saxon, but Norse in origin, and seem to enter written Standard English from forms used in the north of England. The Anglo-Saxon word for the animal is "culver," which appears unrelated to any other word. For that matter, "pigeon" is not a common Romance word, but a French innovation; the common Romance words (including the somewhat distant-looking Spanish paloma) are based on the Latin word columba.]So with the pigeon/dove, we have the rare bird that was eaten in English but kept for other purposes in Norman French. Eaten as squab, of course, though there's another misleading term: squab is the name for a pigeon chick, but what we probably eat, if we ever do, is a more mature animal given a more appetizing younger name (much as most of the "lamb" eaten in the US is more properly "mutton").Peculiar too is that the "dysphemism" (negative term) for the bird is Norman, and the euphemism is Saxon.
JoeSperrazza (talk) 12:21, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Here restaurants call it "pigeon" or "squab" depending on whether it's one or t'other. One of my recipes uses Cormorant, and notes for another, (the only one out of 7 that uses actual squabs!) suggests using young Cormorant as well or instead of squabs.
The etymology is odd, given the rigidity with which the Saxon/Norman divide generally operates. Archolman 00:02, 24 March 2011 (UTC)