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Indian Burdwan
A very savory and highly approved Indian dish. The joints of a parboiled fowl are generally used for this dish, but if necessary the remains of chicken or fowls that have been served before, and even rabbit, veal, or lamb may be warmed up in the sauce, for which the following is the recipe: Peel and chop very finely 4 shallots and 1 onion. Put them into a stewpan with a small cup of good stock, 1 tablespoonful of the essence of anchovies, a little cayenne, and 1 ounce of butter rolled in flour. Stir over the fire until the sauce is ready to boil, then put it aside to simmer till the onions are done, adding a small cupful of mixed Indian pickles, cut into less than 1/2-inch pieces, 1 tablespoonful of chili vinegar, and 1 or 2 glasses of wine, madeira or sherry. Simmer the sauce to make the pickles tender, and pour in the wine when the fowl is ready to be stewed. Skin and lay the fowl in neat pieces into the stewpan with the sauce, and if the fowl has been only parboiled, stew it gently for fifteen or twenty minutes, but for a thoroughly cooked fowl serve as soon as it is ready to boil, with the juice of a fresh lime. Rice is sometimes served with Burdwan as with curry.
DUCK should be cooked quickly to be well flavored; they should be served in a hot dish, and the plates should also be heated and ready before the ducks are done.
A Victorian Anglo-Indian reheating sauce: sharp, salty and hot, built to make cold roast fowl worth serving again. The one thing to get right is the order of operations — the sauce must be fully cooked and the pickles tender before the meat goes in, because already-cooked meat only needs warming through.
- Essence of anchoviesA bottled anchovy reduction, once a standard Victorian store cupboard item and now hard to find outside specialist grocers. Use about a tablespoon of anchovy paste, or four or five oil-packed fillets mashed to a paste; it will be saltier than the original, so hold back on any added salt.
- Mixed Indian picklesA jarred mixed pickle of the period would typically contain vegetables such as cauliflower, onion, cucumber and chilli in spiced vinegar. South Asian mixed achar or a British-style mixed pickle both work. Chop it small, as directed; draining it first is a modern choice, not part of the original.
- Chilli vinegarVinegar steeped with dried red chillies, once a standard cruet item. Any hot pepper vinegar will do, or steep two or three dried chillies in a few tablespoons of cider vinegar for an hour.
- MeasuresA "small cup" of stock is roughly 1/2 cup (120 ml); the same for the pickles. A wine "glass" here is about 2 fl oz, so one or two glasses means 1/4 to 1/2 cup of madeira or sherry.
- Butter rolled in flourEffectively a beurre mani\tablablespoons) butter kneaded with a scant tablespoon of flour, dropped into the liquid and stirred as it heats. It thickens the sauce lightly.
- Parboiled fowlA tough old boiling fowl half-cooked in water, then finished in the sauce. A modern chicken does not need this: joint a 3-4 lb bird, poach the pieces 15 minutes, then give them 15-20 minutes in the sauce.
- Cooked meatLeftover chicken, veal or lamb should be added at the end and brought only to the point of boiling. Longer than that and the fibres tighten and dry.
- Finishing and yieldFinishing -- The lime juice goes in at the serving stage rather than during cooking — it lifts the salt and the vinegar.