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To Devil Chicken (Take the pinions rump thighs)
571. Take the pinions, rump, thighs, and gizzard; strew over them half a tea spoonful of cayenne pepper, and a spoonful of salt; put a lump of butter in a saucepan, add a small tea-spoonful of mustard, a dessert-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, or soy, and the same quantity of walnut liquor. Make this sauce hot, well broil the chicken, and lay it in. Squeeze some lemon juice over it.
Another Devil (hotter). -Mix together lemon juice, grated lemon peel, salt, mustard, cayenne pepper, port-wine, Harvey's sauce, King of Oude's sauce (or indeed any other except anchovy), at discretion. Cut slices of cold meat or fowl, butter them well, and put them to soak in the mixture. If any sauce or gravy is left from the meat employed, it will improve the devil. When required, warm it altogether in a saucepan, and serve it up exceedingly hot.
COLD ROAST OR BOILED PORK, FRIED WITH CABBAGE. 572. This cold meat is very good warmed up with fried cabbage, like bubble and squeak (par. 543).
A Victorian "devil" is a way of using up the awkward parts of a bird: broil them hard, then coat them in something hot and sharp. The hinge is that the sauce is warmed, not cooked down — it should stay loose enough to cling and bite.
- The cuts namedPinions are the wing tips, the last joint of the wing; the rump is the tail end. The nearest modern equivalents are wings and thighs. Gizzards are sold with poultry giblets or from a butcher, and are tougher than the wings — simmer them tender first, then broil.
- "Broil" means grillIn British usage of this period broiling is cooking over or under direct fierce heat. Use an overhead grill at its highest setting or a very hot ridged pan; the skin should blister and char at the edges before the sauce goes near it.
- Cayenne and saltHalf a teaspoon of cayenne to a few joints of chicken is genuinely hot by modern palates, and "a spoonful of salt" is far more than a portion of chicken needs. Season to taste and expect to use a quarter of the salt stated.
- Walnut liquorThe spiced vinegar from a jar of pickled walnuts. Pickled walnuts are still sold in Britain; failing that, use mushroom ketchup or a dash of Worcestershire sauce for a comparable dark, vinegary sharpness.
- Bottled saucesHarvey's sauce and King of Oude's sauce were commercial Victorian relishes, neither now readily obtainable. Any dark, vinegar-based table sauce stands in — Worcestershire, mushroom ketchup, or a mixture.
- MustardUse English mustard powder mixed to a paste, or made English mustard from a jar. A mild Dijon will not give the heat the recipe is after.
- The second versionThe "hotter" devil is a marinade for cold cooked meat rather than a sauce for freshly broiled joints. The recipe gives no soaking time; an hour or so should do, and a long soak risks the meat turning sour from the lemon and wine.
- Yield and servingThe joints from one chicken feed two as a savoury course or a light supper. Serve immediately on hot plates — devils cool fast and the fat sets.