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Fowl, Matelote Of
Brown two ounces of butter with a little flour in a stewpan. Stir in half a pint of brown sauce, and add a parsnip and the red part of two carrots, cut into lengths of half a finger, a dozen small onions, blanched and peeled, a bunch of herbs, parsley, a gill of claret, salt and pepper. Cut up a couple of chickens or a large fowl into neat pieces; put them in a clean stewpan with bouillon enough to cover them, and simmer for half an hour; then remove them to the other stewpan with the vegetables, adding a little bouillon if needed. Stew for ten minutes longer, then dish the fowl and reduce the sauce. Pour it hot over the fowl, and serve with pieces of fried eels or crayfish. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A French-style red-wine stew built in two pans, one for poaching the bird and one for the garnish and sauce. The timings assume a tender young chicken; the word "fowl" in the same sentence quietly changes everything.
- The hinge: know which bird you haveTwo young chickens will be cooked through after the half-hour poach plus ten minutes in the sauce. "Large fowl" in books of this period generally indicates a mature bird rather than a spring chicken, and such a bird may need an hour and a half or more of gentle simmering before it is tender. Poach it to tenderness first, then give it the ten minutes in the sauce as written.
- A gillIn an English book of this period a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, about 5 fl oz or a scant 2/3 cup. Use a dry, tannic red; the claret here is for backbone, not sweetness.
- Brown sauceThis means espagnole or a reduced brown stock thickened with browned roux, not bottled brown sauce. Half a pint is 10 fl oz, or 1 1/4 cups. A well-reduced dark chicken or veal stock, lightly thickened, does the same work.
- BouillonPlain meat or poultry stock. Most of the poaching liquid is left behind, though the recipe allows a little bouillon to be carried into the sauce, so keep it lightly seasoned and do the final salting in the sauce.
- "The red part of two carrots"The outer orange layer, cut away from the paler core, which in older carrot varieties tended to be woodier. With modern carrots simply use the whole root, cut into batons of an inch and a half to two inches, the recipe's "half a finger."
- Give the vegetables a head startGive the vegetables enough time -- Read in order, the vegetables go into the sauce at the start and can simmer there while the birds poach separately, which gives them the better part of half an hour before the meat joins them. Keep that pan at a simmer rather than idle, or parboil the carrot, parsnip and onions first, and check they are tender before dishing.
- Reducing the sauceLift the meat out and boil the sauce hard until it coats a spoon. Taste at that point: reduction concentrates the salt already in the brown sauce.
- The eel garnishFried eel is the signature of a matelote, but European eel is now critically endangered and under trade restriction. Crayfish tails, or plainly fried shrimp, give the same brine-and-butter counterpoint.
- YieldFive or six, as stated, served with bread or plain boiled potatoes to take up the sauce.
Matelote means "sailor's style", from the French matelot, sailor, and in France it usually describes a freshwater fish stew — eel, carp, pike — braised with red or white wine, small onions and mushrooms. Extending the garnish and sauce to poultry was a familiar nineteenth-century move: once a garnish and sauce were codified they could be hung on another main ingredient. The fried eel or crayfish served alongside plausibly survives from the fish original, kept on as garnish. The two-pan method — poach the meat in neutral bouillon, then finish it in a separately built sauce — echoes professional kitchen practice, where sauces were made in quantity and garnishes assembled to order.