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Fowl with Spinach
501. Poach nicely in the gravy, five or six small eggs, Dress them on flattened balls of spinach round the dish, and serve the fowl in the centre, rubbing down the liver to thicken the gravy and liquor in which the fowl has been stewed, which pour over it for sauce , skimming it nicely, and serving all hot. Mushrooms, oysters, and forcemeat balls may be put to the sauce. The spinach may be, and often is , replaced by greens or turnip-tops.
A Victorian way of serving a boiled or stewed fowl: the bird whole in the centre, spinach and poached eggs round the rim, and the cooking liquor thickened with the bird's own liver. The technique is sound, but a few of the steps assume kitchen habits that have since lapsed.
- The hinge: the liver liaisonRubbing the cooked liver through a sieve into the hot liquor thickens it without flour, but it must not boil once the liver is in or it will curdle into grains. Hold the sauce just below a simmer and whisk the sieved liver in off the heat.
- Cook the liver firstThe instruction assumes the liver has been simmered with the fowl. Poach it in the stewing liquor for 8-10 minutes until firm and no longer pink at the centre before sieving; raw liver stirred into warm gravy is neither safe nor smooth.
- Poaching the eggs in gravy'Small eggs' here means genuinely small; use the smallest eggs you can get, and expect them to sit closer to a modern small than a large. Slip them into the barely trembling gravy and give them 3 minutes for a set white and soft yolk. Do them in two batches so the liquor does not cool and cloud.
- Flattened balls of spinachThe recipe gives no quantity; allow a generous 2-3 lb of spinach for five or six cakes, drain it hard, chop it and press it into flat cakes the size of the eggs so each egg has a seat. Squeezing out the water matters: wet spinach will thin the sauce it sits in.
- Greens and turnip-topsTurnip-tops were a cheap winter stand-in and are still worth using; they need longer cooking and a little more seasoning than spinach, and a blanch in salted water takes the edge off any bitterness.
- SkimmingA stewed fowl throws a good deal of fat. Let the liquor stand a minute and lift the fat off before the liver goes in, or the sauce will separate on the plate.
- The optional additionsMushrooms want a few minutes in the sauce; oysters want no more than two, added at the very end, or they toughen and shrink. Forcemeat balls should be poached separately in stock so their crumbs do not cloud the gravy.
- YieldThe recipe gives no size for the bird; a 4-5 lb chicken with the spinach and eggs will serve about five or six, which matches the five or six eggs called for.
Serving a boiled fowl surrounded by a ring of dressed vegetable and eggs belongs to the older English service, where a dish was expected to arrive complete rather than composed on individual plates. Spinach cakes and poached eggs are a pairing that runs through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery and shades into the French usage of a la florentine, in which spinach beneath eggs or fish is the defining mark. Thickening the sauce with the bird's own sieved liver is an economy of the same period, giving a darker, richer gravy from an organ that might otherwise be wasted. The note that greens or turnip-tops may replace the spinach is a reminder of how seasonal the vegetable supply still was: spinach was a spring and autumn crop, while turnip-tops carried households through the lean end of winter.