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Boiled Chicken with Tarragon Sauce
Take a large chicken, singe, truss and draw; put a piece of butter mixed with a handful of tarragon leaves inside; cover it with thin slices of fat bacon, put it in a saucepan with the neck, gizzard and some pieces of trimmings of veal; add one teacupful of Maderia wine, sufficient broth to cover, and some fat skimmed off some rich stock. When boiling, stand the saucepan at the side of the fire and simmer for three-quarters of an hour. Take the chicken out when it is cooked, strain and skim the liquor, thicken with a little roux, put in a small bunch of tarragon leaves, and boil for twenty minutes. Skim, strain and reduce the sauce, thicken it with the beaten yolks of two eggs and stir over the fire until it comes to a boil; then add a small piece of butter and one tablespoonful of blanched green tarragon leaves. Dish the chicken, pour the sauce over, and serve.
A classic poached chicken with a tarragon velouté, written for a cook who already knows how to handle a bird and a stockpot. Two instructions in the original need rethinking before you start.
- Draw first, then trussThe verbatim order reads "singe, truss and draw," but a bird must be drawn (gutted) before it is trussed, and today it arrives drawn and singed. Buy a 4-5 lb chicken, dry it well, season the cavity, and truss it so it holds shape in the liquid.
- Do not boil the finished sauceThe recipe says to thicken with egg yolks and "stir over the fire until it comes to a boil." Yolks set and break into curds well below boiling. Hold the sauce at 175-180F, stirring, until it coats a spoon, then pull it off the heat and beat in the butter.
- "Stand the saucepan at the side of the fire"This means a bare simmer, not a boil - on a modern burner, the lowest setting where the surface barely trembles. A hard boil shreds the breast and clouds the liquor you need for the sauce.
- Check the temperature, not the clockThree-quarters of an hour suits a small bird. A supermarket 4-5 lb chicken usually wants 60-75 minutes at a gentle simmer; go by 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, then let it rest in the warm broth while you finish the sauce.
- MeasuresA teacupful was not standardised; period tables put it anywhere from about 4 to 6 fl oz, so read the Madeira as 1/2 to 3/4 cup. "A little roux" for this volume means about 2 tablespoons each butter and flour, cooked to blond, whisked into the strained broth.
- Fat bacon and veal trimmings"Fat bacon" here is unsmoked barding fat or fresh salt pork, used to keep the breast moist, not smoky streaky bacon. Veal trimmings and the skimmed stock fat are there for body and gelatin; a veal bone or a spoonful of demi-glace does the same work.
- Two lots of tarragon, used differentlyThe leaves inside the bird and the bunch in the sauce are for infusion and get strained out. The final tablespoon is blanched - 10 seconds in boiling water, then cold - which fixes the green colour and softens the anise edge. Add it at the very end.
- Reducing the sauceReduce the strained, skimmed velouté by about a third before the yolks go in; the liaison thickens but does not concentrate flavour. Taste for salt only after reduction, since the bacon and stock both carry salt.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a large chicken of this kind will serve about four, carved at table with the sauce poured over. Rice, buttered noodles or plain boiled potatoes absorb the sauce best; the remaining poaching broth makes an excellent base for soup the next day.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893 and put his name to this collection in 1896, at a moment when American hotel cooking was consciously French in vocabulary and technique. The dish is the classic poulet poché à l'estragon: a bird gently poached in its own enriched broth, the liquor turned into a velouté and finished with an egg-yolk liaison. Tarragon - estragon - reaches English through Arabic tarkhūn and is commonly linked to Latin dracunculus, "little dragon"; the reasons offered for that name, including the plant's coiling roots, are traditional rather than documented. It was among the herbs associated with French rather than English cookery. The Madeira, the veal trimmings and the fat skimmed from "some rich stock" all assume a professional kitchen with a stockpot always going and offcuts always at hand, which is why the quantities read so casually.