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Removes or Releves: Poulet
Poulet à la sauce is a boiled chicken served with white sauce. It may be au céleri-with celery sauce, au macaroni-with macaroni, or with any vegetable garnish. Served cold, covered with a white sauce and garnished with strips of tongue and truffles, it is called à la Belle Vue. au riz is boiled with rice. À la Turque, the rice is dressed with saffron, currants and sultanas. à la Génoise is boiled, and served in a white curry sauce with cheese and macaroni. à la Chivry is cooked in mirepoix with slices of bacon, and served in Ravigote sauce. à la Mona-cooked with wine, wmato sauce, Portugal onion and bacon. à la d'Escars-larded, and braised in stock and wine with bacon, vegetables, etc. rôti à la peau de goret has a crackly skin from melted lard having been dropped on it while roasting. à la Milanaise-stuffed, roasted, and served with Milanaise garnish. à la Hambourgeoise-stuffed with butter, chopped parsley, etc., and roasted.
Poulet à l'estragon has a stuffing made of the liver, bacon, tarragon, etc.; it is roasted, and served in a white sauce with chopped tarragon. à la Royale is stuffed and braised. à la Chevalière is larded, braised, and served in a rich white sauce with mushrooms. à la Carmélite-the back and breast bones removed, it is stewed and served in rich brown sauce with button onions, olives, and artichoke bottoms cut in slices. à la St. Cloud is larded with strips of truffle and bacon, braised, and served in brown sauce with wine. à l'Italienne-filled with a stuffing of the liver with bacon, mushrooms, etc.; roasted, and served in a white sauce with oil, wine, tarragon, etc. à la sauce tomates is stuffed, braised, and served with tomato sauce ; aux champignons with mushroom sauce.
Twenty ways of serving a chicken as a remove, and the first dozen begin by boiling it. That is the detail a modern cook will get wrong, because the bird the page means is not the bird in the shop.
- A boiling fowl is a different animalPoulet à la sauce assumes an older bird with set muscle and plenty of connective tissue, simmered slowly until tender and producing good broth as it goes. A supermarket roasting chicken given the same treatment turns stringy and dry while the stock stays thin. Boiling fowls still exist, but they have to be asked for.
- Mirepoix meant a braising bedÀ la Chivry is cooked in mirepoix with slices of bacon. In this book a mirepoix is the bed of vegetables and bacon the bird sits on while it braises, together with the liquid it gives up. Today the word usually means diced onion, carrot and celery used as a flavour base at the start. Same vegetables, different stage of the recipe.
- Crackling on a chickenRôti à la peau de goret means roasted with a piglet’s skin, and the page explains it: melted lard dropped on the bird while it roasts gives a crisp blistered skin. Basting with hot fat rather than with pan juices still does this, and pan juices are the reason most roast chicken skin goes soft.
- The stuffing uses the liverBoth à l’estragon and à l’Italienne stuff the bird with its own liver and bacon. The liver is the first thing missing from a bird bought ready dressed, and it supplies both the texture of that stuffing and most of its flavour.
- Artichoke bottomsÀ la Carmélite is finished with button onions, olives and sliced artichoke bottoms, which means the trimmed bases of globe artichokes with all leaves and choke removed before cooking. They are sold in jars and frozen; starting from whole artichokes is most of an hour’s work.
- Boned, then stewed wholeThe Carmélite has the back and breast bones taken out and the bird stewed in one piece, so it can be served without carving. It is a real technique and worth the trouble on a tough bird: the shape holds, and every portion comes out the same.
A boiled fowl at the centre of a formal course is the hardest thing on this page for a modern reader to take seriously, and the most informative. The distinction between a bird for roasting and a bird for boiling was one a butcher kept and a cook relied on, and the old hen that had stopped laying was worth more in the pot than in the oven, with the broth counting as part of the return. Everything else follows. The sauces are white and rich because there is good stock to make them with; the garnishes are celery, macaroni, rice and cucumber because they will carry sauce; and the bird comes to the table whole with the sauce over it because it would not survive being carved.