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CHICKEN (a la Chasseur)
Cut a young chicken down the back and flatten it out. Put it for an hour in a marinade of oil, lemon-juice, sliced onion, and chopped parsley. Egg and bread-crumb it, and broil over a clear fire. Serve garnished with water-cress tossed up in oil and vinegar. Brown sauce in a sauce-boat, flavoured with sherry, should also accompany it. Probable cost, 3s. 6d.
A spatchcocked bird, marinated, crumbed and grilled over embers. The whole dish turns on managing the heat so the crumb colours before the chicken is done rather than long before it.
- Cut down the back and flattenThis is spatchcocking: split the bird through the backbone (modern practice is often to cut along either side with shears and lift it out) and press hard on the breastbone until the bird lies flat. Slashing the thickest part of the thighs helps the legs and breast finish together.
- Bird sizeA "young chicken" here means a small spring bird of roughly 2 to 3 lb, not a modern 4 lb roaster. A small free-range chicken flattens and cooks evenly; anything heavier risks burning its coating before the thighs are done.
- A clear fireCharcoal or wood burned down to glowing embers with no flame and no smoke. On a gas grill the equivalent is medium heat with the bird set away from the direct burner, lid down, and turned every few minutes.
- Egg and crumb over live fireBreadcrumbs scorch fast. Keep the bird well above the coals, bone side down for most of the cooking, and expect roughly 30 to 40 minutes for a small chicken. If the crust runs ahead of the meat, finishing in a moderate oven (around 375F) is a reasonable modern expedient, though the recipe itself calls only for the fire.
- DonenessCook until the thickest part of the thigh reaches 165F / 74C and the juices at the joint run clear. A flattened bird gives you easy access to check both thighs.
- The marinadeAn hour in oil, lemon juice, sliced onion and parsley is enough; longer in that much acid softens the surface of the breast. Wipe the bird dry and pick off the onion before egging and crumbing, or the coating will not adhere.
- Brown sauceIn a Victorian kitchen this means a stock-based sauce thickened with browned roux; at its most elaborate that is espagnole, though many household versions were a plainer browned gravy. A good reduced chicken or veal stock thickened lightly and finished off the heat with a spoonful of dry sherry gives the same effect.
- Yield and the watercressServes two, three at a stretch. The recipe calls the watercress a garnish, but as it is tossed in oil and vinegar it eats as a small salad; dress it at the last moment or it collapses.
- Probable cost3s. 6d. is the book's estimate of what the dish should cost to make, given for the housekeeper's budgeting. It has no reliable modern conversion.
A la chasseur means "hunter's style," and in classical French cookery it normally signals a sauce of mushrooms and shallots in white wine and tomato, a name often said to evoke the fare of a returning hunting party. Cassell's uses the name more loosely, for a bird split, grilled over the fire and sent up with brown sauce and a sherry flavouring, which puts it closer to the English grill-room tradition of the split and devilled fowl than to Escoffier's later codification. Grilling a flattened chicken over embers appears to have been familiar chophouse and club work in the period, and watercress tossed in oil and vinegar was a common Victorian accompaniment to grilled birds, valued as much for cutting the richness as for the look of the dish. The costing at the end is characteristic of the book: Cassell's was written for middle-class households running on a fixed weekly allowance, and nearly every entry ends with what the cook should expect to pay.