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Aromatic Seasoning
First blanch and cook the rice in stock. Then carefully remove the breasts of the fowls or chickens, leaving the bones on them. Trim them neatly, and cut into nice portions, say three from each breast, removing the skin at the same time.
Toss the joints in butter in a sauté-pan for a few minutes over a brisk fire; when nicely coloured put the pan in the oven, covered with a piece of buttered paper, and then allow to braize for ten or twenty minutes. Add the butter left over from cooking the chickens to the rice. Season to taste, and let it reduce in the oven till almost dry. Then mix the rice with the truffles, previously chopped finely. Fill a buttered border mould with the cooked rice; shake it well to get the rice in firmly, and unmould on a hot dish. Have the artichoke bottoms and macédoine of vegetables ready heated. Fill the artichokes with the vegetables, and place them neatly round the top of the border of rice. Season the chicken breasts with aromatics and salt; pour off the fat, and dress them in the centre of the dish; pour over them a little of the sauce, and serve the remainder in a sauce-boat to be handed round.
Place the dish in a hot oven for a few minutes to get well heated, and send to table. (For Sauce, see page 146.)
This is a method sheet rather than a full recipe: no quantities are given, the sauce lives on another page, and the "aromatic seasoning" of the title is a spice blend the book assumes you have already mixed. Read it as an assembly plan for a rice border with chicken suprêmes.
- Aromatic seasoningIn books of this period the phrase generally points to a dry compound spice, the epices composees of French practice: white pepper, nutmeg and mace with cloves and dried herbs such as bay and thyme, ground fine, the exact mix varying from book to book. The page gives no quantity; treat it as a pinch used like a finishing pepper on the hot breasts.
- Quantities to work backwards fromThe page gives none, so these are a suggested reconstruction only. For four, two chickens (breasts only; if "three from each breast" means each half breast, that is twelve pieces, though read literally it would be six), about 7 oz raw rice cooked in a pint of stock, four artichoke bottoms, and roughly a cup of diced cooked vegetables for the macedoine.
- "Leaving the bones on them"Most likely the supreme cut with the wing joint left attached, then trimmed and skinned, though the page does not say which bone is meant. The nearest modern equivalent is an airline breast, or take them off the carcass yourself with the first wing bone still in place.
- Oven temperatureThe page gives none. For a short gentle braise a modern oven at 350F suits, covered with buttered paper (parchment does the job) directly on the meat. Cook skinless breast portions to 165F internal, which will be nearer ten minutes than twenty. Keep the final reheat brief -- about five minutes -- or the breasts dry out.
- The rice"Blanch and cook in stock" means a quick parboil to wash off surface starch, then absorption cooking. Reducing it in the oven "till almost dry" is the hinge: wet rice will not hold the shape of the mould. It should be sticky enough to pack and stiff enough to stand.
- The border mouldA ring mould, buttered heavily. Pack the rice in with the back of a spoon, tap it down hard, let it sit two or three minutes to settle, then invert onto a warmed dish. A modern silicone or metal savarin ring works identically.
- TrufflesThe page gives no quantity. A tablespoon of finely chopped preserved truffle, or truffle peelings with a little of their juice stirred into the rice, gives the effect at less outlay; truffle oil does not.
- MacédoineSmall even dice of carrot, turnip, green beans and peas, cooked separately so each keeps its colour, then bound in a little butter. It is a garnish, so keep the dice under a quarter inch.
- The sauceThe cross-reference is to a sauce elsewhere in the book, which we cannot identify from this page alone. A reduced brown sauce, a supreme, a veloute finished with cream, or a light jus from the chicken bones deglazed into the saute pan would all suit the dish.
The dish belongs to the late-Victorian and Edwardian professional kitchen, when a dinner served \arrived in sequence and was portioned by servants, and cooks built elaborate architecture to carry it: a rice or semolina border unmoulded as a ring, the meat heaped in the well, and a rank of stuffed artichoke bottoms round the rim. The "aromatic seasoning" that gives the page its title is the older \pices composes or \pices fines of French practice, a house blend of ground spices and dried herbs that a kitchen would presumably have mixed in quantity and kept to hand \of use as commside was likely enough as commercial spice mixes and simpler seasoning took over. Note too that only the breasts are used and the skin is discarded; one assumes a kitchen working at this level had ways to absorb the rest of the birds, which is exactly the sort of assumption that makes a book like this hard to cook from at home.