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Roast Guinea Hen
Roast the guinea fowl in the usual way, keeping it well basted and the breast covered with a slice of fat bacon, which may be removed five minutes before dishing. The oven should be very hot for the first ten minutes; allow thirtyfive to forty-five minutes for a medium-sized bird. Serve in a bed of cress or lettuce strips (cut with scissors) which has been mixed with French dressing.
Guinea hen is much leaner and drier than chicken, so the barding and basting here are structural, not decorative. The original assumes you know how to roast a bird; the numbers below fill in what it leaves out.
- "Very hot" oven, then moderate"Very hot" oven -- a very hot oven is roughly 450-475F, which is what the first ten minutes calls for. The recipe never gives a second temperature; dropping to about 375F for the remainder is a modern reader's inference rather than the book's instruction, but holding 475F for forty minutes will scorch a bird this small.
- Size and timing"medium-sized" is not defined here; guinea hens commonly dress out at around 2 to 2 1/2 lb, which suits the stated 35-45 minutes, and a heavier bird of 3 1/2 lb will want closer to an hour. For safety, roast to 165F at the thickest part of the thigh, away from the bone.
- Fat baconPeriod barding fat could be fat bacon, fatback or salt pork cut thin. Modern heavily smoked streaky bacon may dominate a delicately flavored bird. Pulling it off five minutes before dishing, as the recipe directs, is what lets the breast brown, so do not skip that step.
- Basting is not optionalGuinea has very little intramuscular fat and goes dry and stringy fast. Baste every ten minutes with the pan fat, and rest the bird 10 minutes before carving.
- French dressingIn this period the term means a plain vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, usually three parts oil to one of vinegar. It is not the sweet orange bottled dressing of later American supermarkets.
- Dress the greens lastCress or shredded lettuce collapses under a hot bird. Toss the greens with the vinaigrette at the moment the guinea leaves the oven and set the bird on them just before it goes to the table.
- YieldOne bird of this size serves two generously, three at a stretch. Guinea carves much like a small chicken.
The guinea fowl is a West African bird, domesticated in antiquity and known to the Romans, that reached European poultry yards in earnest in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by way of the Guinea coast trade, which is the usual explanation given for the English name. In American cookery it sat in an odd middle place: farm-raised, yet often treated as game, because its darker, close-grained flesh and slightly gamy flavor behave more like pheasant than chicken. That suits the treatment here -- barded with fat, roasted hot, and served on cold dressed greens rather than with gravy.