Home › The Principles of Cookery › Pilau of Fowl
Pilau of Fowl
Truss a plump young chicken as if for boiling. Put it into a stewpan, with five pints of stock seasoned rather highly with pepper, salt, and powdered mace, and boil gently until it is three-parts done. Whilst the fowl is boiling, wash a pound of best Patna rice, and dry it in a soft cloth. Throw it into boiling water, and boil quickly for five minutes, drain it, and stir it in a stewpan with two ounces of butter until it is equally and lightly browned. When the fowl is half cooked, put in the rice, and four ounces of Sultana raisins, and let all simmer gently together until the grains are tender without being broken, and the gravy is almost absorbed. Lay the fowl in a hot dish, cover with the rice, lay the raisins on the top, and garnish the dish with hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters, or with thinly-sliced onions fried until they are quite dry and brown. Serve very hot. Time to boil the fowl, according to size. Three-quarters of an hour to simmer the rice. Sufficient for four or five persons. Probable cost, 3s. 6d., with a chicken at 2s. 6d.
A Victorian reading of the Indian pilau, cooked entirely on the stovetop in a wide pan. The main thing to watch is the rice, which will be mush long before the stated time is up.
- The 45-minute rice is the problemPatna rice parboiled five minutes and then simmered a further three-quarters of an hour will collapse. Once the rice goes into the pan, 15-20 minutes covered over low heat is enough for the grains to soften and absorb the stock; check at 12.
- Two conflicting cues for the fowlThe text says to boil the chicken until "three-parts done" and then, two sentences later, to add the rice when it is "half cooked." Work backwards from the rice instead: put the bird in first, and add the rice when the chicken needs about 20 more minutes. A 3-4 lb chicken poaches in roughly 50-60 minutes total; the thigh should read 165F.
- Five pints of stock is far too muchThat is close to 2.8 litres in imperial pints, and a pound of rice absorbs roughly 2 pints. Poach the fowl in whatever it takes to cover, then lift it out, reduce the broth to about 1 litre for the pound of rice, and return the bird. Otherwise you get soup.
- Patna riceA long-grain rice from Bihar, dry and separate when cooked, and the standard "curry rice" of British kitchens before basmati became widely sold. Basmati or any good long-grain will do; a pound is about 2 1/3 cups dry, feeding five generously.
- Browning the rice in butterTwo ounces is 4 tablespoons. Stir constantly over medium heat until the grains smell nutty and take a pale tan colour, five minutes or so. This is what keeps the finished pilau loose rather than sticky, and it is worth not rushing.
- MaceThe lacy covering of the nutmeg, warmer and less sweet than the seed itself. Ground mace loses its scent quickly; a scant teaspoon of a fresh jar in this quantity of stock, plus a generous hand with the pepper, as the recipe asks.
- SultanasGolden raisins. Adding them at the start of the simmer, as written, leaves them swollen and soft; if you prefer them plump but distinct, stir them in for the last five minutes.
- The fried onion garnishSlice as thinly as you can and fry in a shallow pan of oil over moderate heat until deep brown and crisp, then drain on paper. They darken further off the heat, so pull them a shade early.
- ServingServes four or five, as the recipe states. The whole fowl goes to table under its blanket of rice, which cools fast; warm the dish thoroughly first.
Pilau is one English spelling of a word that reaches English through Turkish pilav and Persian polow/pilāw -- a family of dishes in which rice is cooked in a seasoned broth so that the grains take up the flavour and stay separate. It reached Victorian cookbooks largely through Anglo-Indian households, and this version shows what happened to it in transit: the mace, sultanas and quartered hard-boiled eggs would not look out of place in a Mughal pulao, but the whole trussed fowl "as if for boiling" and the reliance on stock rather than whole spice are thoroughly English. The specification of Patna rice matters -- it was a long-grain rice British importers handled in bulk through the nineteenth century, and its name came to stand in for "Indian rice" generally, much as basmati does now. The costing at the end, 3s. 6d. with the chicken alone at 2s. 6d., is a reminder that a young fowl was a real expense in a Victorian household, and that the pound of rice helped it stretch to five people.