Home › The Principles of Cookery › CHICKEN (aux Fines Herbes)
CHICKEN (aux Fines Herbes)
Make a forcemeat by mincing the liver of a chicken, and adding to it a tea-spoonful each of chervil, tarragon, chives, and parsley, all finely minced, two pinches of salt, and one of pepper; work these ingredients together with a little butter, put them inside the chicken, and sew it up to prevent the forcemeat escaping; cover the bird with slices of bacon, place over that some buttered paper, and roast before a clear fire. Put a piece of butter the size of an egg into a saucepan, and, when it is hot, fry in it a large onion sliced, and a large carrot; mix in very smoothly a table-spoonful of flour, and add sufficient stock to make the sauce a nice thickness. Add a glass of white wine and a tea-spoonful each of pimpernel, chervil, tarragon, and garden cress, all finely minced. Simmer the gravy gently for an hour, strain it, and, if necessary, put in with it a little more salt and pepper. When it has simmered for a short time, serve the gravy in the dish which contains the chicken. Time, half an hour to roast the chicken; an hour and a quarter to make the gravy. Sufficient, one chicken for three persons. Probable cost, 2s. 6d.
A French-style roast bird from Cassell's, written for a spit and an open fire and for a chicken far smaller than anything sold today. The herb list and the timings both need attention before this works in a modern kitchen.
- "Pimpernel" means salad burnet"Pimpernel" here almost certainly means salad burnet -- In herb mixtures of this kind pimpernel (Fr. pimprenelle) stands for Poterium sanguisorba, salad burnet, a cucumber-scented salad herb, rather than scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis), which is not a food plant. If salad burnet is unavailable, leave it out rather than substituting anything sold as pimpernel at a garden centre.
- The roasting time is for a different birdHalf an hour before a clear fire suited a small young chicken; the recipe gives no weight, only that one bird serves three. A modern 3-4 lb bird stuffed with forcemeat needs roughly an hour and a quarter at 400F, and both the thigh and the centre of the forcemeat must reach 165F. The liver stuffing sits in the coldest part of the cavity, so check it, not just the meat.
- Roasting before a fireThe original bird turns on a spit with radiant heat on all sides and a dripping pan beneath. An oven at 400F on a rack over a tray is the equivalent; remove the bacon and paper for the last fifteen minutes to let the skin colour.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. The teaspoonfuls of minced herbs are loosely packed fresh leaves, not dried.
- A glass of white wineRead as a wineglassful, conventionally about 2 fl oz in Victorian measure. Use something dry; the sauce simmers for an hour and any sweetness will concentrate.
- Stock quantityNo amount is given. Start with about a pint for a tablespoon of flour, since an hour and a quarter of gentle simmering will reduce it considerably, and top up if it tightens too far before straining.
- Herbs in the sauceChervil and tarragon lose almost everything over an hour's simmer. Build and reduce the sauce with the onion and carrot, then add the minced herbs in the last five minutes before straining, or hold a pinch back to scatter over the finished dish.
- YieldThree servings from one small bird, per the original. A 4 lb chicken will comfortably feed four.
Fines herbes is generally understood in French cooking as a particular quartet — chervil, tarragon, chives and parsley, minced fine and used raw or added late — though the term has also been used more loosely. Cassell's reproduces the quartet exactly in the forcemeat, then improvises a second, older-fashioned mixture for the sauce, reaching back to the English kitchen-garden herbs of salad burnet and garden cress. The Dictionary of Cookery was compiled for middle-class households, and its French entries were part of a wider Victorian effort to bring restaurant technique within reach of that kitchen. The barding with bacon and the sheet of buttered paper are pure open-hearth practice, protecting the breast from the radiant heat of a spit; the priced note at the end, 2s. 6d. for a bird serving three, is the sort of budgeting detail that ran through the book.