Home › The Principles of Cookery › FOWL (a la Carlsford, entree)
FOWL (a la Carlsford, entree)
Bone a fowl, without making an opening down the back; fill up the vacancies made by the removal of the bones with a forcemeat, and put a roll of it into the body. A nicely-seasoned sausage-meat may also be added, and placed on either side. Truss firmly with slender skewers, and tie the bird to the spit. Baste frequently, and roast it a whole hour. An ordinary veal stuffing may be used; but a mushroom or any other delicately prepared forcemeat will be an improvement.
A boned, stuffed roasting fowl, written for a spit and an open fire. The technique transfers well to an oven, but the boning and the stuffing density are what decide whether it works.
- Bone through the back, not the breast"Without making an opening down the back" means the Victorian cook boned the bird through the neck and vent, leaving the skin intact so it could be re-formed and trussed. That is fussy work; boning through the back and sewing the seam closed gives the same result with far less swearing, and the seam sits underneath on the platter.
- "Fowl" means a mature birdA Victorian fowl was an older laying hen, tougher and more flavourful than anything sold today. A 4 to 5 lb chicken is the modern stand-in; boned and stuffed, it will serve six to eight as an entree course.
- Forcemeat and stuffing quantitiesA boned bird of this size takes roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb of forcemeat in total, counting the roll placed in the body cavity. Pack it firmly enough to restore the bird's shape but not so tightly that it splits the skin as the stuffing swells.
- Oven, not spitRoast at 375F. Set the bird on a rack over a shallow tin so the fat that would have dripped into the fire can escape; a boned bird sitting in its own grease will not brown underneath.
- The hour is a starting pointOne hour suits a spit turning before a fierce fire. In an oven, a stuffed boned bird of 4 to 5 lb usually needs 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours. The forcemeat and any sausage-meat must reach 165F at the centre, which is the reading that matters, since a boned bird has no thigh joint to test.
- BastingWith the bones gone the bird cooks faster and dries faster. Baste every fifteen minutes with butter or the pan drippings, and cover the breast with buttered paper or foil for the first half if it is colouring too quickly.
- Veal stuffingThe "ordinary veal stuffing" of the period was usually a breadcrumb and suet forcemeat seasoned with lemon zest, parsley and herbs and bound with egg; it took its name from the meat it was served with and did not necessarily contain veal. Minced pork or a pork-and-chicken mixture gives a similar texture and is easier to buy.
- CarvingRest the bird 15 minutes, then cut straight across in slices like a galantine. Every slice carries skin, meat and forcemeat, which is the entire point of boning it.
Dishes titled *à la* something-or-other in the later nineteenth century were often named for a patron, a house or a place, though many such names denote a garnish or style instead; Cassell's dictionary carries a good number of them with no explanation attached, and the name is generally taken as a compliment rather than a description. The method itself is older and more traceable: a boned, stuffed and re-formed bird is the basis of the French *galantine*, and English cookery had adopted it as a way of making a single fowl stretch further and carve more elegantly. Boning through the neck and vent, so that the skin stays a closed bag, was a mark of skilled kitchen work. The instruction to tie the bird to the spit points to a cook who could manage an open fire, though spit instructions persisted in print long after closed range ovens were common.