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Fowl, with Macaroni
Cut up a fowl into neat pieces, and make a seasoning of pepper and salt--a salt-spoonful of each--and a little grated nutmeg; roll the pieces in the seasoning, dredge them with browned flour, and fry lightly, using oil or butter. Stew the bones and trimmings; put them into a stewpan with a quart of water, or broth from the boiling of veal, if at hand, a carrot, a sliced onion, a piece of garlic about the size of a pea, a small bunch of parsley, a clove or two, a tea-spoonful of mustard, and two of grated cheese, with salt to taste. When the bones, etc., have stewed an hour, or more, strain. Have ready a stewpan, containing three ounces of dissolved butter, place five or six ounces of good macaroni, previously soaked an hour in water, into it, pour the strained gravy over, and simmer until soft; then arrange the fowl in the centre of a dish, with the macaroni as a wall round it. Pour half a wine-glassful of Marsala into the gravy, make it hot, and serve poured over the fowl. Time to fry fowl, ten minutes; to simmer macaroni, one hour and a half. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A late-Victorian Anglo-Italian braise that assumes two things no longer true of a modern kitchen: that the bird is an old boiling fowl, and that dried macaroni takes an hour and a half to soften.
- The hinge: finish the fowl in the gravyTen minutes in the pan only colours the pieces, and the recipe as written never returns the fowl to the heat. Brown them, then return them to the strained gravy and simmer covered for 30-40 minutes until the thickest pieces reach 165F, lifting them out to rest while the macaroni cooks.
- Macaroni timingAn hour and a half of simmering, and the hour of soaking, belong to the coarse dried macaroni of the period. Modern dried macaroni wants 8-12 minutes in the hot gravy, and no soaking at all. Ignore the stated time entirely or you will get paste.
- "A fowl"Read this as a mature stewing hen of about 4-5 lb. A supermarket roasting chicken of the same weight works, cut into eight or ten pieces.
- Browned flourPlain flour toasted dry in a pan or a slow oven until nut-coloured. It was kept ready in Victorian larders for colour and a slightly roasted flavour; it thickens less than raw flour, so expect a thin sauce.
- UnitsA salt-spoonful is about 1/4 teaspoon. An imperial quart is about 5 cups; allow a little extra if you want room for reduction over the hour. Half a wine-glassful of Marsala is roughly 2 tablespoons; let it cook a minute in the gravy.
- The stockWing tips, back and neck in water for an hour give a thin broth; veal stock, as suggested, gives it body. The teaspoon of mustard and two of grated cheese (the recipe does not say which) go into the stock pot, not the finished sauce; the solids are strained out with the bones, though their flavour carries into the gravy.
- Fat and assemblyThree ounces of butter (6 tablespoons) for 5-6 oz of macaroni is generous by modern taste; half is enough. Build the wall of macaroni on a warmed dish, or it sets stiff before it reaches the table.
- YieldFour to five as written, as a main course with nothing else but the pasta.
Cassell's belongs to the generation of British cookbooks that treated macaroni as a respectable foreign ingredient rather than an Italian dish: it arrives dried in long tubes, is soaked and simmered in broth until soft, and is used as a garnish or a border round meat rather than served as a course of its own. The presence of Marsala, grated cheese and a pea-sized piece of garlic marks the recipe as one of the book's nods to Italy, Marsala having been shipped to Britain in quantity since the late eighteenth century. The structure of the dish -- joint the bird, brown the pieces, build a stock from the bones and trimmings while the rest is prepared -- is the ordinary economy of a household working with a whole fowl, and the long simmering time for the macaroni is a reminder that dried pasta of the period was much thicker and harder than what is sold today.