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Fowl, Braised
Fill a nice young fowl with forcemeat, after removing the breast-bone. Put it into a stewpan, with a pint of broth, two glasses of white wine, any available poultry trimmings and bones, and onion stuck with cloves, a piece of carrot, and two or three blades of mace, pepper, and salt. Lay thin slices of bacon over the fowl, and envelop it in a delicate cloth. Cover the braising-pan over, and place it on a moderate fire. In an hour's time take out the fowl, and brown it in the oven. Strain the gravy in the stewpan, boil, and reduce it to a glaze, with which cover the fowl. Garnish with a fricassee of mushrooms and truffles if these are at hand. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A classic French-style braise dressed in Victorian English: the bird poaches gently in aromatic broth, then goes into the oven to colour while the liquid is boiled down to a coating glaze. The whole point is the two-stage cooking, so do not try to brown it first.
- The birdA "nice young fowl" here means a young chicken, roughly 3 to 3 1/2 lb. A stewing fowl or older bird will not be tender in an hour. Modern supermarket chicken of that size is a direct substitute.
- Boning the breastRemoving the breast-bone (keel and ribs, leaving the legs and wings intact) gives room for stuffing and lets the bird sit flat. Save the bones for the braising liquid, along with the neck and wing tips, since they are the "poultry trimmings" called for.
- ForcemeatA seasoned stuffing bound with egg, typically minced veal or pork with breadcrumbs, suet, parsley and lemon zest. Because the stuffing is meat, it must reach the same finished temperature as the bird.
- Two glasses of white wineA Victorian wine glass runs about 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz, so roughly 1/2 to 2/3 cup total. Dry white; the pint of broth is an imperial pint, 20 fl oz, or about 2 1/2 US cups.
- The cloth and the lidWrapping the bird in a thin cloth (cheesecloth or muslin) keeps the bacon in place and stops the surface catching. A tight lid and a low fire mean a bare simmer, not a boil, which is what keeps the breast from going stringy.
- Times and temperaturesAn hour at a gentle simmer is about right for a 3 lb bird, but check with a thermometer: 165F in the thickest part of the thigh and in the centre of the stuffing. Brown it in a hot oven, 425 to 450F, for 10 to 15 minutes only, since it is already cooked.
- Reducing to a glazeStrain the liquid, skim the fat, then boil hard until it is syrupy and coats a spoon. Expect the broth and wine together to come down to well under half a cup. Gelatin from the chicken bones and skin is what makes it cling; no flour is wanted.
- Mace and trufflesBlades of mace are the dried outer covering of nutmeg; a scant 1/4 teaspoon of ground mace stands in. Truffles are optional by the recipe's own admission, and a fricassee of sauteed mushrooms in a little cream is a fair garnish on its own.
- YieldThree or four servings, as stated, though a 3 lb stuffed bird will stretch to four comfortably as part of a larger meal.
Braising a whole bird in a covered pan with wine, bacon and a stuck onion is French practice absorbed wholesale into English cookery through the nineteenth century, and Cassell's reproduces it with the vocabulary intact: forcemeat, braising-pan, glaze, fricassee. The instruction to reduce the strained cooking liquid to a glaze and pour it back over the bird is the older sense of the word "glaze" in cookery, a meat stock boiled down until it sets to a shining varnish, which was a staple of professional kitchens before commercial extracts made it something bought rather than made. The airy "if these are at hand" about truffles suggests a readership that might plausibly have some, or at least wished to be addressed as though they might.