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Fowl, with Rice
Prepare the fowl as if for boiling; cover with water, or good veal broth, if at hand. Skim well while boiling, and put into the saucepan, half an hour before the fowl is cooked, a quarter of a pound of rice, salt, pepper, and an onion. Stew very gently till tender. Take out the fowl, strain the rice, and put the latter before the fire to swell; thicken the broth with flour and butter; serve the fowl on the centre of a dish, with the rice round, and the sauce over all. The delicate appearance of the fowl will be spoiled if the rice be not well-washed, and the scum carefully removed. Time, one hour to boil fowl; half an hour to stew rice. Probable cost, 4s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain poached chicken with rice cooked in its own broth, and a sauce made from the same liquid. Nothing here is difficult, but the result depends almost entirely on temperature control.
- Never let it boilDespite the word "boiling" throughout, the pot should sit at a bare shiver, around 180F, with the surface barely moving. A rolling boil shreds the breast, clouds the broth and makes the skin ragged, which is exactly the "delicate appearance" the recipe is anxious about.
- What a fowl wasA Victorian "fowl" was often an older bird, sometimes a spent laying hen: firmer and stronger in flavour than a modern broiler, and suited to gentle cooking. The recipe's own timing -- one hour -- suggests a bird not much past roasting age. Use a 4-5 lb chicken and expect it done in about an hour; a genuine boiling fowl, if you can find one, will need considerably longer before the rice goes in.
- QuantitiesA quarter of a pound of rice is 4 oz, a generous half cup uncooked, which will yield roughly 12 oz cooked. Long-grain white rice is right here. The recipe gives no water quantity because the rice cooks loose in the broth and is then strained, so the pot simply needs to be full enough to cover the bird.
- Washing the riceThis is not fussiness. Unwashed rice releases surface starch into the broth, which turns the finished sauce cloudy and gluey. Rinse in several changes of cold water until it runs clear.
- Before the fire to swellAn open Victorian range gave dry radiant heat that dried and separated the strained grains. Spread the drained rice in a shallow dish, cover loosely, and hold in a 200F oven for ten to fifteen minutes.
- Thickening with flour and butterEqual weights kneaded cold into a paste, then whisked into the simmering strained broth. About 1 oz each per pint of liquid gives a light pouring sauce; use more for a thicker coating. Simmer two or three minutes to cook out the raw flour.
- Broth and seasoningVeal broth is optional luxury; chicken stock does the same job. Salt the pot early enough that the rice absorbs some, and taste again after reducing the sauce, as poaching liquid concentrates.
- Cost and yield4s. was a substantial outlay at a time when many labouring families were living on something in the region of a pound a week or less. Four to five servings holds true.
Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery was a late-Victorian household reference, published in parts and then as a fat single volume, aimed at middle-class families with a cook or a maid-of-all-work rather than at professionals. Boiled fowl was one of the staples of the English dinner table in that period, valued as an invalid dish and a plain-family dish alike, and usually served with a white or parsley sauce. Building the accompaniment out of the poaching liquid, as here, was standard economy: the broth pays for itself twice, once as the cooking medium for the rice and again as the sauce. The arrangement of a whole bird ringed with rice has been stripped of every spice but pepper and onion, which is itself a fair indication of what plain English cookery of the 1870s and 1880s thought a delicate dish should taste like.