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Poultry, a La Tartare
Divide the remains of a turkey capon or any poultry into neat joints, dip these in egg and bread-crumbs, then into clarified butter, then into egg and bread-crumbs again, and set them aside until wanted. Put the yolk of an egg into a bowl, and beat it for two or three minutes. Add a table-spoonful of dry mustard, a little pepper and salt, and a small pinch of cayenne, and, very gradually, eight table-spoonfuls of salad-oil. The oil should be put in first in drops and afterwards in tea-spoonfuls, beating well between each addition. Stir in a tea-spoonful of vinegar, and then more oil and vinegar in the same proportion until the sauce is as thick as custard. Taste it, and add a larger proportion of vinegar if liked, but this will make the sauce thinner, which is not desirable. Add three shallots finely minced, a tea-spoonful of chopped tarragon and chervil, and five or six drops of the essence of anchovies. Pour this cold sauce upon a dish. Broil the pieces of chicken over a clear fire till they are brightly browned, lay them upon the sauce, and garnish the dish with finely-minced pickled gherkins. A fresh chicken may be cut into neat joints and served in this way, and if young, will be excellent. It should be seasoned, dipped in egg and bread-crumbs, sprinkled with clarified butter, dipped into egg and bread-crumbs again, and broiled over a clear fire for twenty-five minutes or half an hour. Time to broil the joints, ten minutes. Probable cost, exclusive of the cold chicken, 1s. 4d.
This is two recipes in one: a cold mustard mayonnaise, and a way of using up the carcass of a roast bird by crumbing and grilling the joints. The sauce is the part that can go wrong.
- The hinge: build the mayonnaise slowlyOne yolk will carry eight tablespoons of oil only if the first spoonful goes in literally drop by drop, with hard beating between additions. If it splits, start a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and beat the broken mixture into it a little at a time.
- Raw eggThe sauce is never cooked. If serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurised eggs or shell eggs from a source you trust, and keep the finished sauce refrigerated and eat it the same day.
- A tablespoon of dry mustard is a lotDry mustard carries the seasoning here. Start with two teaspoons, let it sit five minutes to bloom, and taste before adding more.
- Salad-oil and essence of anchoviesSalad-oil here means a mild olive oil, not extra-virgin, which turns bitter when beaten. Essence of anchovies was a thin bottled sauce; substitute a scant quarter-teaspoon of anchovy paste or a few drops of colatura, and taste before adding salt.
- CaponA castrated cock bird, fatter and larger than a roasting chicken and rarely sold now. Any cooked poultry works; the recipe was written for whatever was left on the sideboard.
- "Broil over a clear fire"That means direct heat from a fire burned down to clear, flameless coals, not a modern overhead grill setting. A hot barbecue or a ridged grill pan does the job; keep the heat moderate or the crumbs blacken before the joint is hot through.
- The two timingsTen minutes suits already-cooked joints, which only need heating and colouring. The twenty-five to thirty minutes given for raw chicken over direct fire will scorch the crumb long before the thigh reaches 74C/165F; brown the pieces on the grill and finish them in a 200C/400F oven, checking with a thermometer at the bone.
- YieldThe eight tablespoons of oil alone give about half a cup of sauce, and the recipe then calls for more oil and vinegar until it thickens, so the final quantity is open-ended; enough to pool under joints for three or four people.
"A la tartare" in nineteenth-century English kitchens meant sharply mustard-and-shallot flavoured, usually with a cold emulsion sauce beneath grilled, crumbed meat - related to the tartare sauce still served with fish, which in its older form was a mustard mayonnaise with shallot, gherkin and herbs rather than the sweeter commercial version common now. The name is often traced to a habit of labelling aggressively seasoned dishes Tartar, in the same spirit that gave us "devilled," though this is tradition rather than documented fact. A large roast bird fed a household for several days, and a strong cold sauce with a crisp crumb coating was one way to make a second or third appearance of a turkey look deliberate. The costing in shillings and pence, given "exclusive of the cold chicken," tells you the book expected the bird to be already paid for.