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Asparagus Heads (Choose a nice white chicken)
Choose a nice white chicken, tie up the legs, and put it in a casserole with some water, salt, carrots, onions, and a bunch of herbs, and let it cook for about one hour. Then make a sauce with four ounces of flour, four ounces of butter, three-quarters of a pint of the liquor in which the chicken is cooked, pepper, and nutmeg, and let this cook for fifteen minutes. Next add the yolks of three beaten up eggs, and a quarter of a pint of double cream. Put this mixture through a sieve, adding two ounces of good butter, and work it till smooth. Drain the chicken, and serve on a croute of fried bread, pour the sauce round, and garnish the sides with heads of green asparagus. Serve the rest of the sauce in a sauce tureen.
A poached chicken under a rich velouté finished with a yolk-and-cream liaison. The book files it under the garnish rather than the bird, which is why the title reads oddly.
- The hinge: never boil the liaisonOnce the three yolks and the cream go in, the sauce must stay below a simmer or the yolks will scramble and the sieve will not save it. Take the pan off direct heat, temper a ladle of hot sauce into the eggs first, then return the lot and hold it at around 180F/82C until it coats a spoon.
- "Casserole" means the potIn a kitchen of this period this is a deep lidded stewpan on the stove, not a baking dish. Everything here happens on the hob.
- Imperial measuresThree-quarters of an imperial pint is 15 fl oz, about 1 3/4 US cups; a quarter pint is 5 fl oz, a generous half cup. Four ounces each of flour and butter are weights, roughly a cup of flour and one stick.
- That roux is very stiffEight ounces of roux to 15 fl oz of stock gives a paste, not a pouring sauce. Expect to loosen it with another cup or more of the cooking liquor before the eggs and cream go in, and cook the flour out for the full fifteen minutes so it does not taste raw.
- Cooking time and donenessAn hour at a bare simmer suits a bird of about 3 1/2 lb. Judge by temperature rather than the clock: 165F/74C in the thickest part of the thigh, away from bone. Keep the water at a shiver, as a rolling boil shreds the breast.
- Double creamBritish double cream runs about 48 percent butterfat. Heavy or whipping cream is the nearest US substitute; single cream or half-and-half will thin the sauce noticeably.
- Sieving and the final butterPush the sauce through a fine sieve while hot, then beat in the last two ounces of butter off the heat, a piece at a time. That final butter is for gloss and will split if the sauce is boiled afterwards.
- The asparagusOnly the tips are used. Boil them separately in salted water for two to four minutes depending on thickness and refresh briefly, so they hold their colour against the pale sauce.
- YieldServes four as a main course, six as a smaller course. Fry the bread croute and set it down at the last moment or it will soften under the bird.
Books titled high class cookery were aimed at the cook of a well-staffed household and at the cookery-school pupil training for one, and this dish is a fair sample of the style: a plainly poached bird made grand by an expensive sauce and a costly garnish. The sauce itself is a textbook velouté finished with a liaison of yolks and cream, the treatment French cooks called à l'allemande. Asparagus heads carried real weight as a garnish because good asparagus was seasonal, labour-intensive and often forced under glass on large estates; using only the tips was itself a display of plenty. That the recipe is indexed under the garnish rather than the chicken says something about which element the reader was expected to notice.