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Chicken Pilau
Take a fat young fowl, and put it into a saucepan with two quarts of water, a large onion, two cloves of garlic, a bay-leaf, three cloves, a small piece of cinnamon, a blade of mace, the seeds of twelve cardamoms, and a tea-spoonful of salt, and boil till the fowl is tender. Remove the fowl, and put into the liquor a quarter of a pound of best Patna rice; stir occasionally, and watch it closely. The moment the rice is soft drain it on a wire sieve, saving the liquor for soup; steam it before the fire for about half an hour. Before serving, remove the spices with the exception of the cloves and cardamoms. Put the fowl on a dish, cover it over with the rice, and garnish it with hard-boiled eggs and onions fried brown and crisp. Probable cost, 4s. 6d.
A poached fowl served under rice cooked in its own spiced broth — an Anglo-Indian pilau of the drain-and-steam school rather than the absorption method. A few of the original's assumptions need translating.
- The hinge: drain the rice the instant it is softThe rice finishes by steaming, not boiling, so it must come off the heat while the grains are just tender and still separate. Left in the liquor another two or three minutes it turns to a spiced congee and the dish is lost.
- "A fat young fowl"Victorian table fowls were generally older, tougher birds than most chicken sold now, and "boil till tender" may have meant a good deal longer than a modern bird needs. A modern 3½–4 lb chicken is usually done in 50–60 minutes at a bare shiver of a simmer. Hard boiling makes the breast stringy and clouds the broth you are saving for soup.
- Patna riceA long-grain rice associated with Patna in Bihar, widely sold in British kitchens and the name that became a grocer's shorthand for long-grain. Basmati is the nearest thing on most shelves today, though it is more aromatic and cooks a little differently. Rinse it until the water runs clear, or the drained grains will clag.
- Quantities are lopsidedA quarter of a pound of rice is roughly a generous ½ cup dry — around 2 cups cooked, which is thin cover for a whole bird. For four people at table, ½ lb of rice is more realistic, and increase the salt in the poaching liquor accordingly.
- Cardamom seeds"The seeds of twelve cardamoms" means the black seeds shelled out of twelve green pods, not twelve whole pods and not ground cardamom. The husks are discarded; the seeds stay in the finished dish, as the recipe notes when it exempts them from the spices to be fished out.
- "Steam it before the fire"The original stands the sieve of drained rice near the open range so residual heat dries and swells the grains. Cover the rice in a wide pan with a folded cloth under the lid and hold it in a 250–275F oven for 20–30 minutes, or on the lowest possible burner.
- Blade of maceA blade is one strip of the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg — about ¼ teaspoon of ground mace if you have no whole, though whole is easier to remove.
- Yield and servingServes about four if the rice is increased, three otherwise. The garnish of quartered hard-boiled eggs and onions fried dark and crisp is not merely decoration — it supplies richness and crunch a poached bird lacks, so do not skip it. The probable cost of 4s 6d is a substantial sum for a plain dish.
Pilau (pulao, pilaf) had entered English cookery books well before Cassell's, and by the time the Dictionary of Cookery was compiled in the 1870s it had settled into a recognisably Anglo-Indian house style: whole spices rather than a ground masala, a bird poached whole and presented under a blanket of rice, and a garnish of hard-boiled egg and fried onion of the kind also found on biryani. The method here — cooking the rice in the poaching broth, then draining it and finishing it in dry heat — is closer to South Asian practice than to the absorption pilafs of later English books, and the specification of Patna rice reflects a real trade: rice from that region was shipped to Britain and its name became a grocer's byword for long-grain. The instruction to save the liquor for soup is characteristic Victorian household economy.