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Removes or Releves: Petits
Petits poulets à l'Indienne are young chickens stuffed with rice, breadcrumbs, curry powder, etc.; braised, and served with rice and Indian sauce, garnished with Indian pickles.
Petits poussins are very young chickens. They are larded and braised, and served à la Vénitienne in a white sauce with wine, cocks' combs, chopped mushrooms, truffles, etc.; or à la Chevalière, in white sauce with button onions and mushrooms.
Pâté chaud de volaille au jambon is a hot chicken and ham pie.
Pâté froid de volaille aux truffes is a cold chicken pie with forcemeat and truffles.
Galantine de poulet is a galantine of chicken.
DUCKS.
Ducks are roasted and served à la Seville, with orange sauce; or braised and served aux petits pois, or aux champignons, with stewed peas or mushrooms.
Canards, or canetons, à la Mancelle are braised and served with chestnuts. aux groseilles vertes are roasted or braised, and served with green gooseberry sauce. au Père Douillet are braised in wine and stock, and served in the sauce. à la St. Michel braised in wine and broth, and served with mushrooms, etc., in the sauce. à l'Espagnole-braised with vegetables, oil, and garlic; served in a brown sauce with olives. à purée verte are stewed, and covered with a purée of green peas. à la Provence-stewed and served with mushrooms and olives. en surprise the breasts are cut out, minced, and put back again with highly seasoned brown sauce; sprinkled with breadcrumbs and browned. à l'Andalouse are boned, stuffed with sausage meat and braised; served with slices of tomatoes, and artichoke bottoms. They are also served aux navets, aux choux, au céleri, or aux olives, with stewed turnips, cabbages, celery, or olives. With a purée of turnips, they are à la Nivernaise. Au vert pré, they are stewed with green herbs.
GOOSE.
This half of the chapter is about small birds rather than large joints: chickens sized to one guest, and ducks in a dozen braises. The page breaks off at a heading for goose with nothing under it.
- Poussin is still sold under that nameA very young chicken, one per person, which cooks quickly and dries out just as fast. The larding and braising in these entries is protection against exactly that, and a modern cook roasting a poussin dry and fast is solving the same problem a different way.
- Larded and barded are two different thingsTo lard is to thread strips of pork fat through the flesh with a needle, which no domestic kitchen does any more. To bard is to lay fat or bacon over the outside, which anyone can do. The page uses both words precisely, and they are not interchangeable.
- Cocks’ combs are not obtainableThey appear in the à la Vénitienne garnish alongside mushrooms and truffles, and they are the clearest possible sign of a kitchen using every part of every bird. Leave them out and the dish still works; there is no substitute and no point pretending otherwise.
- Green gooseberry sauce with duckA sharp fruit sauce in the place where a modern cook expects orange. Green gooseberries have a short early-summer season and are difficult to buy, which dates this dish to a few weeks rather than to a year, and makes it worth freezing a bag when you see them.
- En surprise is a method, not a trickThe breasts are cut out, minced with a strongly seasoned brown sauce, put back into the cavity they came from, crumbed and browned. It is a way of stretching a bird and of re-serving one that has already been carved, dressed up as a conjuring turn.
- The page stops mid-chapterIt ends with the word GOOSE and nothing after it. That is where this page of the original was cut, not the end of the book’s treatment of geese, so do not read the omission as a judgment on them.
The care taken here over the age and size of birds is not fussiness; it is a direct consequence of how the food reached the guest. A dish was carried round and each person helped themselves, so a bird small enough to be served whole to one guest was worth distinguishing by name from one that had to be divided. That is why the book separates spring chickens from very young chickens, and ducks from ducklings, and why a page about grand food spends its first lines on how small a chicken can be. The duck entries, braised in wine and stock in eight or nine slightly different ways and finished with chestnuts, gooseberries, olives, turnips, cabbage or celery, show the other half of the system: one long braise as the house method, and the vegetable of the week deciding what the dish was called.