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FOWL (a la Bechamel)
Have ready a pint of bchamel sauce; pour about half of it over a couple of fowls, boiled according to the recipe given (see FOWL, BOILED); the other half should be thinned with a little stock, and served in a tureen. Send to table hot, with a garnish of brocoli in bunches round the dish. Time, from half an hour to one hour. Probable cost, 7s. per pair. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
This is an assembly-and-serving instruction that leans on two other recipes in the book: boiled fowl and béchamel. The success of it rests entirely on the sauce being the right consistency and everything reaching the table hot.
- A pint of béchamelCassell's pint is the Imperial 20 fl oz, about 2.5 cups. Half masks the birds, half is thinned with stock for the tureen; aim for a coating sauce on the platter and a pouring sauce in the boat.
- "Fowl" is not a broilerA Victorian fowl was a mature laying hen, tough-fleshed and full-flavoured, poached slowly for an hour or more. Two supermarket chickens of 3-4 lb each will feed the same number but cook far faster, so treat the stated time as belonging to the older bird.
- The time given is the boilingThe time given is most likely the boiling -- Half an hour to one hour appears to refer to cooking the fowls rather than to the sauce stage, though the recipe does not say which. Poultry is done at 165F in the thickest part of the thigh; a mature bird may need well past an hour to become tender even after it is safe.
- Keep the sauce movingBéchamel left standing forms a skin and thickens as it cools. Make it last, keep it covered over barely simmering water, and thin the tureen portion with hot stock rather than cold.
- Warm everythingSauce poured over hot birds on a cold platter chills and stiffens on contact. Heat the serving dish and the tureen before the food goes near them.
- "Brocoli in bunches"The older spelling. Victorian broccoli covered both sprouting sorts with slim stems and heading kinds close to cauliflower, so the exact vegetable intended is uncertain; the instruction to serve it in bunches suits sprouting stems, and Tenderstem or broccolini tied or grouped into small bundles gives that look. Boil briefly so it stays green against the white sauce.
- Probable costSeven shillings a pair was substantial money in the 1870s-80s, which suggests a boiling fowl was a considered purchase rather than a weeknight default.
- YieldSix or seven as part of a larger Victorian service. Two whole birds will stretch further at a modern table where this is the only main dish.
B theBéchamel is one of the foundation sauces codified in French cookery and generally traced to the household of Louis XIV, where it is traditionally credited to Louis de Béchameil, a court financier and steward; whether he made or merely lent his name to it is unresolved. By the time Cassell's was being published in parts from the mid-1870s the sauce had been thoroughly absorbed into English cooking, and "à la Béchamel" on a menu simply signalled a white sauce coating rather than anything Parisian. The dish also shows the practical logic of a period kitchen: a boiled fowl is pale and plain, and a rich white sauce with a green vegetable set round the dish turned a frugal, slow-simmered bird into something that could be sent to a dinner table. Splitting the sauce between the platter and a tureen was standard service, so guests could take as much as they wanted without the joint swimming.