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Chicken a la Providence
Thoroughly clean a chicken, truss it neatly and firmly. For this, two skewers are run through the upper and lower parts of the legs, one through the wings, then around it is wound string to keep the fowl in shape. After trussing, salt and pepper and place in a steamer to cook for about an hour and a quarter.
Remove from the steamer, place it on a hot platter, take out the skewers and pour around the chicken a hot sauce made by the following recipe:
Two cups of stock from the kettle under the steamer are thickened with two tablespoons of flour and two tablespoons of butter, cooked together. To this are added, just before serving, half a cup of carrot cut into very small cubes, half a cup of peas, salt and pepper, the yolks of two eggs and one teaspoon of lemon juice.
After pouring the sauce around the chicken, sprinkle the whole with finely chopped parsley and serve. See Page XXVIII.
A whole steamed chicken finished with a velouté enriched with egg yolk and lemon. The sauce is the whole point, and it is the part most likely to go wrong.
- Do not boil the sauce after the yolks go inThe yolks are stirred in off direct heat, just before serving, and the sauce should not return to a simmer or it will curdle into scrambled threads. Temper the yolks with a ladle of the hot sauce first, then stir them back in and hold below about 180F.
- Steaming time and temperatureAn hour and a quarter suits a bird of roughly 3 to 4 lb. Modern birds run larger, so check the thickest part of the thigh with a thermometer and look for 165F; a 5 lb chicken may want closer to an hour and three-quarters.
- Trussing without skewersPoultry skewers are still sold, but butcher's twine alone does the job: tie the legs together at the ankles and loop the string around the body to pin the wings. The purpose is to keep the bird compact so it steams evenly.
- The stock under the steamerUnless you started with stock rather than water, the liquid in the kettle will be thin drippings. Salt it, and consider starting the steamer with a light chicken stock, an onion, a bay leaf and the neck and giblets so the sauce has something to build on.
- The rouxTwo tablespoons each of butter and flour to two cups of liquid gives a light pouring sauce, not a thick one. Cook the flour and butter together two or three minutes without colouring before adding the hot stock.
- Carrots and peasBoth go in "just before serving," which assumes they are already cooked. Dice the carrot small and boil or steam it until tender, and blanch fresh peas briefly; frozen peas need only a minute in the hot sauce.
- Lemon lastThe teaspoon of lemon juice goes in at the end with the yolks. Added early to a milk- or stock-based sauce over heat it does nothing useful, and acid plus prolonged heat makes curdling likelier.
- YieldA 3 to 4 lb bird with this sauce serves four, or six if carved and plated rather than presented whole.
The sauce here is a velouté finished with egg yolk and lemon — close to what French kitchens called sauce poulette, or in its grander form sauce allemande — and it is poured around rather than over the bird, as the recipe directs. What à la Providence denoted here is not clear, and no particular garnish or origin should be read into the name. The steaming is worth noting on its own terms: the pot under the steamer supplies the liquid for the sauce, so nothing is wasted.