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Chicken, Fricasseed

Choose a fresh, tender chicken. Draw, singe and skin it, then cut it into neat joints. Soak these joints in cold water for fifteen minutes, drain them, and put them into a saucepan, with a bunch of savoury herbs, an onion stuck with two cloves, a tea-spoonful of salt, and half a tea-spoonful of pepper, and enough water to cover them. Bring the liquid to a boil, remove the scum as it rises, and simmer very gently for half an hour, or until the meat is sufficiently cooked. When this point is reached, further boiling will spoil the flavour. Put two ounces of butter, two ounces of flour, and a dessert-spoonful of mushroom powder into a stewpan. Stir the mixture about until it is quite smooth, but do not let it brown; add, gradually, a pint and a half of the liquor in which the chicken was boiled, and simmer gently for half an hour. Put the pieces of chicken into a saucepan with a little of the sauce, and let them warm gently. Thicken the remainder of the sauce with the yolks of three eggs well beaten, and a piece of butter about the size of a walnut; drawing the sauce from the fire before adding them. The sauce must not boil after the eggs are added. Put the chicken into a dish, pour the sauce over, and take stewed mushrooms to table on a separate dish. Time, one hour and a half. Probable cost of chicken, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for four persons.