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Lemon-juice (III)
Breadcrumbs. Frying Fat.
A mirepoix, consisting of Bacon, Carrot, Onion, Bayleaf, two Cloves, and Savoury Herbs.
Three yolks of Eggs, One whole Egg.
Seasoning. Truss the fowl as for braising, place it on a bed of vegetables and bacon (mirepoix), with an ounce of butter in a stewpan (braisoire), and let the surface of the fowl get nicely browned over a bright fire. Moisten with stock, season with pepper and salt, cover, and place in the oven for about half an hour. Baste occasionally.
Take up the fowl, untruss, and cut it into neat joints. Put the carcase into the stewpan in which the fowl has been cooking, first removing the fat.
Add the wine, and boil up. Strain and reduce the stock a little. Cook the flour in the remainder of butter (one ounce), but do not allow it to get brown; stir in the stock; add the juice of half a lemon, and let it reduce to a moderate consistency (the sauce must boil for at least ten minutes).
Stir in the yolks of eggs, and let them bind. Dip the pieces of fowl in this sauce after it has cooled, cover each piece completely, and put them on a dish. When set, brush over with beaten egg, roll in breadcrumbs, fry in hot fat a golden colour, drain, dish up, and garnish with fried parsley.
The title is an artefact of the book's indexing — this is a braised fowl, jointed, masked in a thick lemon-and-egg sauce, then crumbed and fried. What it is not is a lemon recipe. The ingredient list at the head is also incomplete: the fowl, the wine, the flour and the butter appear only in the method, so read the whole thing through before shopping.
- What you actually needA chicken of roughly 3-4 lb (the original gives no weight), 2 oz butter in total (1 oz for the braise, 1 oz for the roux, both stated), flour for the roux and wine for the carcase stock -- the original specifies quantities for neither, nor the colour of the wine -- stock enough to moisten the braise, half a lemon, three yolks to bind the sauce and one whole egg for the egg-wash, and breadcrumbs and fat for frying. Quantities beyond the butter, and the yield of four, are our estimate.
- "Fowl" versus chickenA Victorian fowl was an older laying bird with firm, well-flavoured flesh, the reason it is braised before frying. A supermarket chicken is far younger and softer; the original names no oven temperature, and about half an hour in a moderate oven after browning is enough.
- Mirepoix and braisoireThe mirepoix here is a bed of diced bacon, carrot and onion with bayleaf, cloves and herbs, not a garnish — its job is to flavour the braising liquid. The braisoire is simply a heavy lidded pan; a Dutch oven does everything asked of it.
- The hinge: bind, do not boilThe sauce must boil at least ten minutes to cook out the flour, but once the yolks go in it must not simmer again. Take the pan off the heat, stir the yolks in and let the residual warmth thicken it; a bubble at this point curdles the whole thing and the coating will never set.
- Cooling the sauce is the pointDip the joints while the sauce is barely warm and thick, then chill them until the coating is firm -- an hour in the refrigerator; a cold larder would have served the same purpose. If the coating is loose it will slide off in the fat and the crumb will not seal.
- FryingDeep fat at 350–360F, two to three minutes, just until golden — the chicken is already cooked and the aim is only to crisp the crumb. Hotter fat colours before the coating sets and can split it.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs thoroughly before they go near the fat; wet parsley spits violently. A few seconds in the same fat is enough and it should stay green.
- The carcase stepReturning the bones to the degreased pan with the wine and boiling up is a fast stock-strengthener, not a garnish. Strain it before reducing or the sauce will carry grit from the vegetables.
This is the technique the French kitchen calls à la Villeroi: cooked meat or poultry masked in a sauce stiff enough to set cold, then egg-and-crumbed and fried, so that the sauce becomes an interior rather than an accompaniment. The lemon-and-yolk finish puts the coating sauce in the allemande family, a flour-thickened velouté enriched and bound with yolks, which was a workhorse of English high-class cookery through the late nineteenth century. Dishes like this suggest the world of the private-house cook working for a household with staff: the bird is braised, jointed, sauced, chilled, crumbed and fried in stages, with everything but the final frying done in advance.