Home › The Principles of Cookery › RICE AND CHICKEN (a la Creole)
RICE AND CHICKEN (a la Creole)
Wash half a pound of rice in two or three waters, throw it into boiling water, and boil quickly until it is quite tender. Drain it, and put it on a sieve before the fire to swell. Divide two young chickens into neat joints convenient for serving, sprinkle over these a seasoning made with two crushed cloves, ten powdered peppercorns, and a pinch of ground saffron, and fry in hot fat till they are lightly and equally browned all over. Take them up, and in the same fat fry thirty small onions finely chopped. As soon as the onions turn yellow, drain and put them into a saucepan with the fried fowl, and pour over all as much veal stock as will cover them. Let all simmer gently together until the chicken is done enough. Put the pieces of chicken on a dish, thicken the gravy with a spoonful of brown thickening, and pour it over them: serve the rice on a separate dish. The rice and the chicken should be stewed at the same time, that they may be sufficiently cooked and hot together. Time to simmer the chicken, about forty minutes. Probable cost of chickens, 2s. 6d. each, when in full season. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
A straightforward braise whose only real difficulties are the vanished shorthand — "brown thickening," "young chickens," thirty small onions — and the instruction to dry the rice at an open fire.
- The hinge: cook rice and chicken to finish togetherThe recipe says so outright, and it is the only tricky bit of timing. Start the chicken braising, then put the rice on so that it drains and steams while the sauce is being thickened.
- Young chickensTwo young chickens probably meant birds of roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb apiece, nearer a poussin or small free-range bird than a supermarket roaster. One 4 to 4 1/2 lb chicken, jointed into eight, gives about the same quantity of meat, though the pieces may take a little longer than the stated forty minutes.
- Half a pound of riceAbout 1 1/8 cups dry, which serves the seven or eight the recipe claims. Boiling it loose in plenty of salted water and then draining is the correct Victorian method for a long-grain rice; instead of a sieve before the fire, return it to the dry pan covered, or spread it in a low oven at 250F for ten minutes to dry and swell.
- Thirty small onions, finely choppedThe instruction is internally odd — small onions of the pickling or button sort are usually left whole in a dish like this. Thirty of them is roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb; two large chopped onions give the same volume if you would rather chop than peel.
- Ground saffronBuy threads and crush them yourself. Nineteenth-century ground saffron was notoriously adulterated with turmeric and safflower, and the powder still is. A pinch here means perhaps a dozen threads, steeped in a spoonful of the hot stock.
- Brown thickeningA standing preparation of flour cooked in fat until nut-brown, kept in a jar and spooned into sauces. A tablespoon of beurre manié whisked into the simmering gravy does the same work, or reduce the liquid instead if you prefer a clearer sauce.
- Veal stockA common all-purpose stock of the period. Chicken stock is the sensible substitute; it should barely cover the joints, not swamp them.
- Yield and costSeven or eight portions, as stated. The half-crown per chicken is a reminder that a table bird was a considered purchase — around a day's wage for a poorly paid labourer at the time.
Cassell's uses "a la Creole" loosely, as many late-Victorian British cookery books did: it signalled rice, warm spice and a colonial provenance somewhere between Louisiana and the West Indies rather than any particular kitchen. What is striking here is the seasoning — cloves, black pepper and saffron, with no tomato, no cayenne and no green pepper — which points away from New Orleans and toward the older European rice-and-fowl tradition that runs through Spanish and Provencal cooking, the same current that produced arroz con pollo. The book's habit of quoting a probable cost with every recipe was aimed at the mistress budgeting for a household, and half a crown a chicken places this in the middle-class dinner repertoire of the 1870s and 80s.