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Chickens Stewed Whole
497. Fill the insides of a couple of fowls with large oysters and mushrooms, and fasten a tape round the body to keep them in. Put them in a tin kettle with a cover; set them in a large saucepan, with boiling water, which must not reach quite to the top of the kettle; keep it boiling till the fowls are well done, which they should be an hour after they begin to simmer; take off the lid occasionally to remove the scum, but cover again directly; as the water in the kettle boils away, replenish it with boiling water; take from them all the gravy, and put it into a small saucepan, covering the kettle close to keep the fowls warm, meantime. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour, and add two table-spoonfuls of chopped oysters or mushrooms, the yolks of three eggs boiled hard and minced fine, some seasoning, and a little cream. Boil five minutes, and dish the fowls.
This is a water-bath method: the birds cook in a covered container sitting in a pan of simmering water, so nothing browns and the juices stay in the vessel rather than evaporating. The hinge is that no liquid ever goes in with the fowls — the sauce is made entirely from what they give up.
- The tin kettleAny deep, lidded metal or ceramic container that fits inside a large stockpot with a couple of inches of clearance will do; a covered Dutch oven set on a rack inside a bigger pot works. The recipe wants the water high on the outside of the vessel but not quite up to its rim, and never over it.
- Fowls versus chickensA "fowl" in nineteenth-century usage generally meant an older bird, tougher and fatter than a modern chicken. Two modern 3-4 lb chickens will be done in roughly the same time but will be much leaner, so the yield of natural gravy will be modest.
- TapePlain cotton kitchen twine. Tie the legs together and truss a loop round the body to keep the cavity closed; the stuffing is loose and will fall out otherwise.
- The oysters insideAn hour of cooking turns them firm and small. They are here as seasoning for the birds, not as something to eat whole, which is why the sauce gets a fresh spoonful of chopped oysters at the end. If you want recognisable oysters on the plate, add them to the finished sauce and give them two minutes only.
- Check the temperatureBecause there is no browning and no direct contact with boiling water, the flesh cooks slowly and the stuffed cavity is the last thing to heat. Take the thickest part of the thigh to 165F/74C and check the centre of the stuffing as well; add time rather than trusting the hour.
- Thickening"Butter and flour" means equal parts kneaded cold into a paste (beurre manie) and whisked into the hot gravy, not a cooked roux. Start with 1 tablespoon each per cup of liquid.
- Hard-boiled yolksThree minced yolks are a thickener and a body-builder as much as a flavour; they will make the sauce grainy if the gravy is thin. Push them through a sieve first. The recipe boils the sauce for five minutes after the cream goes in; if you are worried about splitting, keep it at a bare simmer.
- ServingTwo birds feed six to eight. There is no colour on the skin at all, so serve them carved, sauced, with something green or a bright pickle alongside.
Cooking a bird inside a sealed vessel that itself sits in boiling water is an old way of getting gentle, even heat out of an open fire or a coal range, and the same principle survives in the bain-marie and in steamed puddings. The technique keeps every drop of juice, which is the whole point of the recipe: the sauce is the concentrated essence of the fowls, stretched with butter, egg yolk and cream rather than with stock. Oysters were cheap and plentiful in nineteenth-century Britain, sold by the barrel in the cities and used freely as a savoury filling with poultry, beef and mutton. Later in the century pressure on the native beds pushed oysters towards luxury prices, and recipes like this one came to read as extravagant when they had been written as thrift.