Shu Bok Ap (Fried Squab)

History

Squab holds an ancient pedigree in Chinese cuisine stretching back at least to imperial times, when young pigeons appeared on celebratory tables and formal banquets. In Cantonese tradition—the culinary style most deeply associated with the dish—deep-fried squab emerged as a showpiece preparation for festivals, weddings, and special occasions, prized for its tender meat and capacity to hold a crispy, glossy exterior when properly braised and fried. The technique involves poaching the whole bird in a soy and spice-laden broth before plunging it into hot oil, a labor-intensive process that demanded kitchen skill and fresh, young birds.

When Chinese immigrants, largely from Guangdong and the Toisan region, established restaurants in North America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, squab remained a marker of culinary sophistication and abundance—too expensive and labor-intensive for everyday tables, but a signature dish on Chinese restaurant menus. These establishments initially clustered in Chinatowns but soon expanded outward, bringing techniques and ingredient knowledge into broader American foodways. By the early 20th century, Chinese restaurants had become visible enough that American cookbooks began documenting them for home cooks unfamiliar with the cuisine.

Shu Bok Ap appears in Sara Bosse and Onoto Watanna's 1914 Chinese-Japanese Cook Book, one of the first American cookbooks to document Chinese restaurant dishes for domestic preparation. Watanna (the pen name of Winnifred Eaton, a Canadian-American writer of mixed Anglo-Chinese descent) and her sister Bosse adapted the recipe for American home cooks, giving a flour-and-oil fried version with a chicken-liver sauce rather than the braise-then-fry method used in restaurant kitchens. The cookbook itself served a dual purpose: making Chinese and Japanese cuisines legible and "safe" to white middle-class American women, while also preserving techniques and flavor profiles that Chinese immigrant cooks had brought from home. Today, the dish remains central to Cantonese-American restaurant culture, though its high cost and labor intensity have made it increasingly rare on menus in the United States.

Ingredients

• 2 squabs
• olive or peanut oil
• 2 chicken livers
• 1 small onion
• 2 tablespoonfuls syou
• 1 tablespoonful Chinese almonds
• 1/4 pound white mushrooms
• 1 teaspoonful salt
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tablespoonful olive oil
• dry flour

Instructions

1. Cut the squabs into pieces—separate the legs and wings from the body, and cut the rest into four pieces.
2. Singe off all hair and feathers from the squab pieces.
3. Wash in cold water and wipe dry.
4. Dip each piece of squab in dry flour.
5. Toss in boiling olive or peanut oil and cook until crisp.
6. Drain off all fat from the cooked squab.
7. Heat one tablespoonful of olive oil in the pan.
8. Add the chicken livers (chopped very fine) and minced onion to the hot oil.
9. Stir in two tablespoonfuls of syou, one tablespoonful of blanched and chopped Chinese almonds, and the white mushrooms cut small.
10. Fry for ten minutes.
11. Pour the sauce into a hot dish and place the fried squab on top.
12. Garnish with crumbled hard-boiled egg yolks.