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Vermicelli, with Boiled Chicken
Truss a tender chicken for boiling, put it into a stewpan with two pounds of the cushion of bacon into which three or four cloves have been stuck. Add a small piece of white roux, or, failing this, half an ounce of butter mixed smoothly with flour, pour over it as much white stock as will cover it, and let all stew gently together for three-quarters of an hour. Throw into the stock two ounces of vermicelli, and boil it till tender. Take up the fowl and bacon, and place them in separate dishes. Skim the stock, and pour it with the vermicelli over the fowl. Serve very hot. Time, two hours.
A Victorian boiled fowl, poached alongside a piece of bacon whose salt seasons the broth, with vermicelli cooked in the finished stock. Most of the work is in keeping the liquid below a boil.
- Bare simmer, never a boilA rolling boil shreds the breast and clouds the stock, and the recipe depends on that stock being clear enough to pour over the bird. Keep the surface at a lazy tremble throughout and skim whenever grey foam rises.
- "Cushion of bacon"The cushion appears to have been a boned, rounded joint from the fore-end or collar, but the term is no longer current and its exact placing is uncertain. A 2 lb piece of unsmoked gammon or collar bacon is the nearest modern equivalent. If it is heavily cured, soak it in cold water for a few hours first, or the stock will be too salty to serve.
- White roux and white stockWhite roux is butter and flour cooked together without colouring, about a minute over low heat. White stock is an uncoloured veal or poultry stock made from unroasted bones; a light unsalted chicken stock stands in. The roux is there to give the broth body, not to thicken it into sauce.
- The timings do not agreeForty-five minutes of gentle stewing will not cook a 2 lb bacon joint through, and the note at the end says two hours. Give the bacon a head start of about an hour before the trussed bird goes in; a 3-4 lb chicken then needs roughly an hour at a simmer, until the thickest part of the thigh reaches 165F.
- VermicelliThis means fine wheat vermicelli, the Italian sort, not rice noodles. Two ounces is about 55 g, and it will be tender in three to five minutes in simmering stock. Add it only once the fowl is nearly ready, or it will swell and turn the broth pasty.
- Season at the endNo salt is called for because the bacon is expected to provide it. Taste the stock after skimming and adjust only then, once the vermicelli has absorbed some of the liquid.
- TrussingTrussing keeps the legs against the body so the bird cooks evenly and holds its shape for the dish. Kitchen string round the drumsticks and under the wings is enough; the elaborate needle-and-twine method in older books is optional.
- Yield and servingServes four to five. The bacon goes to the table on its own dish to be carved and handed round, with the fowl sitting in its vermicelli broth; a shallow bowl or deep platter works better than a flat one.
Boiled fowl with a piece of bacon is one of the fixed points of nineteenth-century English cookery: the salt meat seasons the poultry and the broth, and both dishes come out of one pot, which mattered in a kitchen with a single range. What dates this particular version is the vermicelli. Fine Italian pasta had been sold in England since the eighteenth century, largely as a soup garnish, and by the middle of the nineteenth century it was a familiar store-cupboard item rather than a novelty, usually cooked directly in the broth it was to be served in. The cut named here, the "cushion" of bacon, belongs to a butchery vocabulary that has largely gone.