Squab substitutes

The other small dark-meated bird sold whole, usually semi-boneless, and the standard restaurant stand-in.

Best for

roasting whole, grilling, stuffed birds, plated main courses, pastilla, salads with warm bird

Right size category, right presentation, right dark meat, and available frozen from most good butchers. A quail weighs around five to seven ounces against a squab's twelve to sixteen, so plan on two. The real difference is fat and depth: squab is genuinely rich and almost beefy in the breast, while quail is lean and delicate and reads much milder, so a dish built to stand up to squab can overwhelm it. Rub quail with butter or duck fat, cook it hot and short, eight to twelve minutes, and pull it while the breast is still faintly pink. Quail dries out even faster than squab does.

Skin-on magret or Pekin duck breast, scored, rendered skin-side down and served rare to medium.

Best for

plated main courses with sauce, salads, anywhere squab breast is sliced and fanned, dishes with fruit or wine sauces

The closest flavor of anything you can buy easily. Squab and duck share that dark, faintly iron, faintly livery richness, and they share the crucial habit of being best cooked to medium rare, so the technique and the sauce both transfer directly. Duck is fattier and more assertive, with a thick fat cap that squab does not have, so the dish comes out richer and slightly more gamey. The obvious limitation is presentation: this is a boneless breast, not a small whole bird, so a recipe built around serving a squab on the plate needs rethinking as sliced breast.

A very young chicken sold whole at roughly squab size, one to one and a half pounds.

Best for

roasting whole, stuffed and trussed presentations, pastilla, grilling under a brick, dinner-party plating

The best answer if what the recipe needs is a small whole bird on each plate. The size, the shape and the cooking method all match. What does not match is the meat: Cornish hen is pale, mild chicken, so a dish designed around squab's dark richness tastes noticeably lighter and plainer, and it must be cooked through to 165F rather than served pink, which means it will never have that rosy breast. Two things narrow the gap: roast it in duck fat or butter, and put a little chicken liver or a spoonful of liver pate into the stuffing or the sauce, which restores much of the depth people associate with squab.

The dark meat of an ordinary chicken, the workhorse substitute wherever squab is not served whole.

Best for

pastilla and bastilla, Cantonese braised pigeon dishes, pies and shredded fillings, stews, rice dishes

In any recipe where the bird is shredded, sauced or wrapped in pastry, this is the sensible and honest choice, and in Morocco chicken pastilla is a standard dish in its own right rather than a compromise. Thigh meat is closer to squab than breast is, since it is darker, fattier and more forgiving, but it is still much milder and softer, and it must be cooked through. Braise it in the same spices and it will taste excellent, just less deep. A tablespoon of chopped chicken liver or a little extra saffron and cinnamon in a pastilla goes a long way toward the richness squab would have brought.

The wild or mature version of the same species, sold whole or as breast crowns.

Best for

braises, pies, salads with seared breast, game dishes, stews

It is literally the same bird, which is why the names get confused, but it is a different ingredient in the kitchen. A wild pigeon has flown, so its legs are sinewy and its flavor is strongly gamey and much more livery than squab. Roast one whole as you would a squab and you will get tough legs. Instead, take the breasts off and sear them fast to rare, and braise the legs and carcass separately for an hour or more. Where squab is delicate and refined, pigeon is robust and best in a pie or a red-wine braise.

Slow-cooked duck leg meat, pulled from the bone, for filled and braised dishes.

Best for

pastilla, pies, ravioli and dumpling fillings, rice dishes, shredded braises

For a filling rather than a plated bird, this is better than chicken thigh and cheaper than squab. Confit or slowly braised duck leg gives you dark, rich, deeply savory shredded meat that lands very near squab in flavor, and the fat it carries makes a pastilla taste luxurious. It is more strongly flavored and stringier than squab, and if it is confit it is already salty, so cut the salt in the rest of the recipe and taste before seasoning.