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Pilau, Chicken
Take a fat young fowl, put it into a saucepan with about two quarts of water, a large onion (whole), two cloves of garlic, a bay-leaf, three cloves, a small piece of cinnamon, a blade of mace, twelve cardamom-seeds, and a tea-spoonful of salt, and boil till the bird is tender. Then remove the fowl, and put into the liquor a quarter of a pound of the best Patna rice; stir occasionally and watch it closely. The moment the rice is soft drain it on a wire sieve, and steam it before the fire for about half an hour. Put the chicken on a dish, cover it over with the rice, and garnish it with boiled rice, and onions fried brown and crisp. Strain the liquor, and serve it up as soup. (See also PILAU OF FOWL.)
A boiled pilau rather than a baked one: the bird and the rice share one aromatic broth, and the broth itself is the second course. Nothing here is difficult, but the rice stage moves fast.
- The hinge: pull the rice earlyThe rice cooks loose in a large volume of spiced stock, so it can go from firm to porridge in under a minute. Start testing at eight minutes and drain the moment a grain is just tender at the centre; the half-hour rest finishes it.
- "Steam it before the fire"This means setting the drained rice near the open hearth to dry and swell in the fire's gentle radiant heat. The nearest modern equivalent is a loosely covered dish in a very low oven (around 200-250F) for 20-30 minutes, or a covered pan off the heat with a cloth under the lid.
- A fat young fowlA 3 1/2 to 4 lb chicken. Poach it at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil, 45-60 minutes depending on size, until the thigh joint moves freely; the breast dries out badly if the water is kept boiling.
- Patna riceA long-grain Indian rice, still sold under that name and interchangeable here with any plain long-grain or a basmati. Do not substitute a short or risotto grain, which will not give the separate grains a pilau wants.
- Quantities of riceA quarter pound is about two-thirds of a cup dry, which is thin cover for a whole fowl and four people. Doubling it is reasonable; keep the cooking liquid generous either way.
- Cardamom"Twelve cardamom-seeds" most likely means twelve whole pods rather than twelve loose seeds; Victorian recipes often used "seeds" loosely for the capsules. Bruised whole pods work and are easier to fish out of the strained broth.
- Garnish onionsSlice thinly and fry in a good depth of fat until deep brown and crisp, then drain on paper. They will darken further off the heat, so lift them a shade before you think they are done.
- Yield and serviceServes about four, in two courses: the rice-covered fowl carved at table, and the strained spiced broth served as soup. Skim the fat off the liquor first and check it for salt, since the rice will have taken up some of the seasoning.
Pilau, pilaf, pilav and pulao all descend from the same Persian word for cooked rice, and the spelling in Victorian British cookbooks is usually the Anglo-Indian one, brought home by families who had served in India. This one is the plainest kind: a single pot of spiced stock used twice, once to poach the bird and once to cook the rice, with fried onions on top. The whole spices listed here /u2014 the cinnamon, mace, cloves, cardamom, bay — are the standard late-nineteenth-century British reading of an Indian spice cupboard, aromatic but without chilli or turmeric, which is why the dish reads as mild by modern standards. Patna rice, named for the city on the Ganges, was the long grain most reliably available in British grocers at the time, and its appearance by name in a recipe like this is a fair index of how ordinary imported rice had become in a middle-class kitchen.