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CHICKEN (a la Reine)
Cut half a pound of cold chicken into neat pieces. Put one ounce and a half of butter into a saucepan, and dissolve it without browning; stir in one ounce of flour, pour on a quarter of a pint of white stock, and stir briskly till it boils; season with pepper and salt. Boil for three minutes, then put in the chicken, two small onions stuck with three or four cloves, a blade of mace, and a bunch of herbs, and simmer for one hour. Make a border of nicely mashed potatoes, and dish the chicken neatly within it. Put the liquor in which it has been boiled into a clean saucepan, beat in the yolk of an egg, place over the fire, bring to boiling point, add more seasoning if desired, and pour over the chicken; fill up the centre with small rolls of grilled or baked bacon. Probable cost, 2s.
A Victorian way of stretching leftover roast chicken into a dressed dish. Two things need attention: the hour-long simmer and the egg yolk finish.
- The egg yolk is the hingeThe original tells you to beat in the yolk and bring the sauce to boiling point. Do not. Slacken the yolk with a spoonful of the hot liquor, stir it back off the heat, and warm gently to about 180F until it thickens; at a boil it scrambles and the sauce breaks into grains.
- An hour is far too longThe chicken is already cooked. Fifteen to twenty minutes at a bare simmer is enough to heat it and take up the flavour of the onion, cloves and mace. A full hour reduces cold roast chicken to threads.
- Quarter of a pintImperial measure, so 5 fl oz, or a generous half cup. With 1.5 oz butter and 1 oz flour this gives a very thick binding sauce; loosen with a little more stock if it stiffens past coating consistency during the simmer.
- White stockAn unroasted stock of veal or chicken bones, pale and unreduced. A good low-sodium chicken stock stands in; avoid dark roasted stock, which muddies the pale colour the dish depends on.
- A blade of maceOne flake of the dried casing of nutmeg, not ground mace. If you have only ground, a scant pinch, added late, since it turns dusty over long heat. Remove the blade, the clove-studded onions and the herb bunch before dishing.
- Bunch of herbsA bouquet garni of parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf, tied so it lifts out whole.
- The potato borderPipe or spoon a wall of stiff mashed potato around the edge of a shallow ovenproof dish and brown it briefly under the grill before filling. Wet mash slumps into the sauce.
- Bacon rollsStreaky rashers, stretched with the back of a knife, rolled tight and skewered on a cocktail stick, then baked at 400F for about 15 minutes until firm. They can be done while the chicken simmers.
- YieldHalf a pound of picked chicken serves two as a main course with the potato, or three at a light lunch. The "probable cost, 2s." is a late-Victorian shilling price and is of historical interest only.
A la reine — "in the queen's style" — was in French cookery generally applied to poultry served white: pale stock, no browning, a sauce enriched and thickened with egg yolk rather than coloured by roasting. It sits among the many made-over dishes that fill Victorian household dictionaries, where the joint from Sunday reappeared through the week in different guises; recipes of this kind were a practical answer to a large roast in a house without refrigeration. The mashed-potato border, piped and browned, is a common period device for turning a fricassee into something presentable at table, and the grilled bacon rolls in the centre do the work a garnish of croutons or truffle would do in a grander kitchen. The clove-stuck onion and the blade of mace belong to an older English seasoning tradition that survived in white sauces long after it had left roast meat.