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Pilau of Fowl
Truss fowl for boiling, place in pan with 3 cups stock or water and simmer 30 minutes. Wash and dry 1 cup rice. Melt 2 tablespoons Crisco and fry 1 chopped onion to golden brown in it; remove onion to plate, add 2 extra tablespoons Crisco and fry rice and 1/4 cup blanched almonds till yellow, add onion, 2 tablespoons seeded raisins, with salt and paprika to taste. Tie in piece of muslin 3 cloves, 6 whole white peppers, 1 bay leaf, and 1 inch cinnamon stick and add them. Make hole in center of rice, lay fowl in it, pour in 1 cup of the stock, let simmer until fowl and rice are cooked, adding more stock as rice swells. Turn fowl over during cooking. Serve fowl with rice around it.
A one-pot braise in which the bird finishes cooking on a bed of spiced rice. The book's original audience had a stewing hen; the timings assume that, and they are the main thing to adjust.
- The hinge: cook to the bird, not the clockThe recipe gives 30 minutes of simmering and then "until fowl and rice are cooked," which is vague because the bird is variable. A 4-5 lb chicken wants about 165F at the thickest part of the thigh; a true stewing fowl can take two hours or more before it is tender, by which time the rice would be ruined, so par-boil an old bird well past the stated 30 minutes before it goes onto the rice.
- "Fowl" means a laying henIn the book's day a fowl was generally a mature bird past its laying life, tough and full of flavour, destined for the pot. A supermarket chicken is a far younger bird. Use a 4-5 lb roasting chicken and expect a milder, quicker-cooking result.
- CriscoThis book was published to promote Crisco, then a novelty, which is why hydrogenated shortening appears where an older cookbook would say butter or clarified drippings. Butter, ghee or a neutral oil all work; ghee is closest to what a pilau would traditionally use.
- Rice and liquidOne cup of raw long-grain rice needs roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of liquid in a covered pan. The instruction to add more stock as the rice swells is sound, but add it hot and in small amounts, or the grains break up.
- The spice bagTying cloves, peppercorns, bay and cinnamon in muslin makes a spice sachet; a tea infuser or a square of cheesecloth does the same job. White pepper is generally described as earthier and less aromatic than black. Pull the bag before serving.
- Blanched almondsSold ready-blanched now. Fry them with the rice only until pale gold, as the recipe says, since they will keep cooking in the covered pan and turn bitter if taken too far.
- PanYou need something wide enough to hold the whole bird nestled into the rice with a lid on top: a deep sauté pan, a Dutch oven, or a heavy casserole. Keep the heat very low once the fowl is in, and check the base for sticking.
- YieldServes four to six, depending on the size of the bird. Carve at the table and spoon the rice around, as directed.
Pilau is one of the many English spellings of pilaw/pulao, a dish of rice cooked in seasoned stock that reached British and American tables largely through the Anglo-Indian kitchen and, in the American South, through Carolina rice cookery, where it survives as "perloo." The version here has the marks of the Anglo-Indian line: whole spices in a muslin bag rather than ground masala, raisins and almonds for sweetness and richness, and paprika standing in for chilli. What makes the page a period document is the fat. A Calendar of Dinners was one of the recipe collections issued to persuade cooks that Crisco, introduced in 1911, could stand in for butter, lard and drippings in every dish they knew, so shortening turns up here in a pilau where ghee or butter would once have been assumed.