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Pilou Francaise
2 chickens 1/2 cup rice 2 tablespoons butter 2 egg yolks Bread crumbs Boil the chickens. When done, cook the rice in the chicken broth, reserving 2 cups of the liquor. While rice is cooking, add the butter to it after 20 minutes. Butter a baking dish, spread out half the rice in it, then lay the chickens which have been cut up for fricassee on top of rice. Add the remaining chicken broth, then cover the fowl with rest of rice. Smooth over top, spread over it the well beaten egg yolks, and sprinkle with bread crumbs. Dot bits of butter over it. Set in hot oven until browned, serve hot.
A layered chicken-and-rice bake of the kind that turns a boiled fowl into a company dish. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how to poach a chicken and season as she goes.
- Oven heat"hot oven" in books of this period is usually taken to mean somewhere around 400-450F. Twenty to thirty minutes at the lower end should be enough to set the yolk glaze and colour the crumbs, since everything in the dish is already cooked; the recipe itself only says to bake until browned.
- Rice quantityHalf a cup of raw rice is very little against two whole chickens, and it will not divide convincingly into two layers in a baking dish. For two 3-4 lb birds, 1 1/2 to 2 cups of raw long-grain rice gives the proportions the method describes.
- The broth is the seasoningNo salt is listed anywhere. Salt the poaching water well and cook the rice in that broth; if the broth is bland the finished dish has nothing else to carry it. An onion, a carrot and a few peppercorns in the pot are period-appropriate and worth the trouble.
- Reserved liquorKeep back about 2 cups of strained broth before you cook the rice. That is what you pour over the chicken layer, and it is what keeps the assembled dish from drying out in a hot oven.
- Butter into the riceAdding the butter after 20 minutes of cooking is really a note about timing rather than technique. Stir it into the rice once the grains are tender and the broth absorbed, off the heat.
- Cutting for fricasseeThis means jointing the birds into serving pieces: legs, thighs, wings, breast halved across. Removing the skin before layering is an improvement, since skin that has been poached and then buried in rice will not crisp.
- The yolk glazeBeat the yolks with a spoonful of the reserved broth or cream so they spread rather than sit in streaks. They set into a thin gold crust under the crumbs, and they will scorch if the dish sits in the oven much past browning.
- YieldTwo chickens with rice will serve eight to ten as a main course. It holds well in a low oven for a short while but the crumb top softens.