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CHICKEN (a l'Estragon)
Put some tarragon leaves in hot water, dry them, and chop them small; make a forcemeat by mincing the chicken's liver, and mixing with it an equal quantity of bacon, a little of the chopped tarragon, some nutmeg, salt, and pepper; stuff the bird with this, cover it with slices of bacon, tie over it some sheets of buttered paper, and roast it before a clear fire. Boil some nicely-flavoured stock with the remainder of the tarragon leaves, thicken it with a little brown thickening, or with flour and butter, and add salt, pepper, and a little lemon-juice. Send this to table with the chicken. Time to roast, half an hour for a small chicken. Sufficient for two or three persons. Probable cost of chicken, 2s. 6d.
A spit-roasted chicken with a liver-and-bacon forcemeat and a tarragon-infused gravy. The method translates easily; the timing does not.
- The half hour is wrong for an ovenThe half hour is short for an oven -- Thirty minutes suits a small bird turning on a spit before an open fire, with radiant heat on all sides. A stuffed 3-4 lb chicken in a 400F oven needs about 1 hour 15 minutes, and the forcemeat at the centre, not just the thigh meat, should reach 165F.
- Blanching the tarragonDipping the leaves in hot water and drying them takes the raw edge off and keeps the colour from going drab in the forcemeat. Do it briefly, a few seconds, then pat dry hard so the stuffing does not turn wet.
- Buttered paperSheets of buttered paper are a basting shield. Baking parchment brushed with butter, tied on with kitchen string, does exactly the same job; remove it for the last 15 minutes so the bacon and skin can colour.
- Brown thickeningA Victorian kitchen staple: flour cooked in fat to a nut-brown colour and kept ready to be whisked into stock. The recipe's alternative, flour and butter, is the fresh equivalent, though it will not take on colour unless you cook it on. Cook it until it smells toasty or the sauce will taste of raw flour.
- The liverOne chicken liver is only about 1 to 1.5 oz, so the equal quantity of bacon means roughly 1.5 oz, and the whole forcemeat is small. If you want enough to be worth carving around, use 4 oz of livers to 4 oz of bacon and add a handful of fresh breadcrumbs to bind.
- BaconNineteenth-century bacon was fatter and far saltier than most supermarket rashers. Streaky bacon or thinly sliced pancetta covers the breast better than lean back bacon, and season the forcemeat lightly until you have tasted a fried scrap of it.
- The sauceAdd the lemon juice off the heat and at the last moment. Long simmering dulls its brightness, and with it the tarragon, which is the whole point of the dish.
- Cost and yield2s. 6d. is the price Cassell's gives for a small bird. Two to three servings is honest for a very small chicken; a modern 4 lb bird will feed four.
Tarragon is the herb that marks a dish as French in an English cookbook, and Cassell's flags it by keeping the French title rather than calling it "chicken with tarragon". The pairing is old and durable: tarragon's faint aniseed note suits poultry and butter better than almost anything else, which is why it survives in poulet \ iá l'estragon, béarnaise and sauce ravigote. Note also that the bird is roasted before a clear fire, not in an oven. At a time when closed ranges were common in British kitchens, spit or bottle-jack roasting in front of the grate was still often held to give the better result. The instruction to use the bird's own liver in the forcemeat belongs to the same economy that priced the chicken on the page.