Season and stew 2 spring chickens with 1 onion, some capers, parsley, 1 bay-leaf and 2 sprigs of thyme chopped fine until tender. Remove the chickens; add 1 tablespoonful of minced pickles, 1 teaspoonful of made mustard, 1 teaspoonful of tarragon and ½ cup of mayonnaise sauce. Let boil up and pour over the chickens. Serve with boiled rice.
A brief nineteenth-century-style entry that assumes the cook knows how to stew a bird and finish a sauce. Two things need attention: the stewing liquid is never mentioned, and the instruction to boil up a mayonnaise-based sauce will break it if taken literally.
- The hinge: do not boil the mayonnaiseMayonnaise is an egg-yolk emulsion and will separate into oil and curd at a hard boil. Bring the reduced stewing liquid with the pickles, mustard and tarragon to a boil first, take it off the heat, let it stop steaming hard, then whisk in the mayonnaise. It should be warm, not simmering.
- Spring chickensThe term meant a young bird, on the order of 1½ to 2½ lb dressed, closer to today's poussin or a very small broiler. Two of them should feed four to six. A single 3½ lb chicken cut into serving pieces is the practical substitute; the flesh will be firmer and wants a slightly longer stew.
- The missing liquid"Stew" here assumes barely enough liquid to cover — water or light chicken stock, about 3 to 4 cups for two small birds, with the onion, capers, parsley, bay and thyme in it. Season the birds before they go in, as the instruction says. Simmer gently rather than boil, 35 to 45 minutes for small birds, until a thigh joint moves freely.
- Reduce before saucingThe recipe skips this, but the stewing liquid will be thin. Lift out the chickens, keep them warm, and boil the liquid down to about a cup of concentrated broth before the pickles, mustard and tarragon go in. Otherwise the finished sauce is watery.
- Made mustard"Made" mustard means prepared wet mustard, as opposed to the dry powder that was the household staple; in practice that usually meant the powder mixed to a paste at home with water or vinegar. A smooth Dijon is a reasonable modern stand-in in a French-styled dish.
- Minced picklesSmall sour gherkins or cornichons, chopped fine — not sweet pickle. With the capers and tarragon they make the classic tartare seasoning, and sweet cucumber pickle throws the whole balance off.
- TarragonA teaspoonful of chopped tarragon, fresh if available; if using dried, halve it. Tarragon loses aroma with prolonged heat, so it belongs in the finishing sauce rather than in the stewing liquid, which is where the recipe puts it.
- ServingBoiled long-grain rice, plainly cooked, and the sauce poured over the jointed birds. Serve promptly — the sauce will not reheat without splitting.
À la tartare in French cookery describes the family of cold, sharp seasonings built on mustard, capers, gherkins and chopped herbs, the same set that gives us tartare sauce for fried fish and the raw beef preparation that later borrowed the name. The usual explanation of the label is a French habit of calling anything piquant or aggressively seasoned "Tartar," after the steppe peoples of the European imagination rather than any actual cooking of theirs — a traditional account rather than a documented one. Classically, poulet à la tartare meant a spatchcocked bird crumbed, grilled and served with the cold sauce alongside; this version instead stews the chickens and turns the sauce into a warm dressing, the sort of adaptation you expect in a book that works through a dish from a different nation for each day of the year — here, the whole of France is represented by capers, tarragon and a spoonful of mustard.