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Fowl, Indian Dish Of
Put over the fire in a large stewpan two quarts of good veal broth, in which place a fowl, trussed as for boiling; add the following spices (pounded), tied in a muslin bag: of cloves, allspice, mace, and peppercorns, each a quarter of an ounce, and of coriander-seed and cinnamon, half an ounce, with forty cardamom seeds. Brown slightly in a frying-pan with two ounces of butter, a pound of well-washed rice (Patna); and when the fowl is nearly done, add the rice, and stew until soft. Cut two or three middle-sized onions into slices, dredge with flour, and fry a nice brown colour, without breaking the rings. Have ready six slices of bacon curled and grilled, and a couple of eggs, boiled hard and quartered. Arrange the fowl in a pyramidal form upon a dish, smother with the rice, and garnish with the sliced onion, bacon, and eggs. Time, half an hour to stew fowl; half an hour to stew fowl and rice. Probable coast, 5s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
An Anglo-Indian pilau in Victorian dress: a whole chicken poached in spiced veal broth, buried in rice and garnished with fried onion, bacon and hard-boiled egg. A few of the quantities and timings need translating before it will work.
- The hinge: don't let the rice turn to porridgeA pound of long-grain rice needs roughly twice its volume in liquid, not two quarts. Ladle out only as much broth as the rice will absorb (roughly 4 to 5 cups), cook it 18-20 minutes covered, and keep the rest of the broth for moistening at the table.
- FowlA Victorian boiling fowl was an old laying hen, tough and full of flavour. A 4-5 lb roasting chicken is the modern stand-in, and it will be done in 50-60 minutes rather than the hour implied here. Take it to 165F at the thigh.
- The spice bagA quarter ounce is about 7 g and half an ounce about 14 g. So: 7 g each of cloves, allspice, mace and peppercorns; 14 g each of coriander seed and cinnamon. Bruise rather than powder them, or the muslin will clog and the broth will go muddy.
- Forty cardamom seedsAmbiguous in the original. If it means individual black seeds, that is only three or four pods; if it means pods, forty is a great deal of cardamom for two quarts. Ten to twelve green pods, lightly crushed, sits sensibly in the middle.
- Patna riceA long-grain Indian rice, once the standard British import and still sold under the name. Basmati is the closest thing on most shelves. Rinse until the water runs clear, since the recipe's frying step depends on dry grains.
- Frying the riceTwo ounces (55 g) of butter for a pound of rice, over moderate heat, until the grains smell nutty and look chalky. Butter browns fast; if it darkens the whole dish tastes scorched.
- Onion ringsSlice across the onion so the rings stay whole, dredge lightly, and fry in deep enough fat to float them. Drain on paper or they will weep grease onto the rice.
- Bacon "curled and grilled"Thin streaky rashers, rolled and skewered or wound round the tines of a fork, then grilled until they hold their shape. Modern thick-cut bacon will not curl.
- Cost and yield"Probable cost, 5s" is five shillings, of purely historical interest. Four to five servings is accurate.
This is a British pilau, and the muslin bag tells you most of what you need to know about it: the spices flavour the broth and are then removed, so nothing gritty or unfamiliar reaches the plate. Cassell's, compiled in the 1870s and reissued for decades, was written for households where returning Anglo-Indian families had made curry and pilau ordinary without making them authentic, and dishes like this one sit in that middle ground — cardamom, coriander and mace handled with the same restraint an English cook would bring to a fricassee. The garnish is the giveaway: fried onion rings and quartered hard-boiled egg are genuinely at home on a pulao, but the curled grilled bacon is pure British breakfast table, and would have been unthinkable in the Muslim kitchens from which the dish's ancestry is generally traced. Veal broth rather than mutton stock is another domestication, veal being the standard Victorian base for anything wanting delicacy.