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Chicken, Scheveningen
Singe, cut off the head and feet, draw and wipe a two-and-a-half pound tender chicken. Season the interior with half teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Place it in an earthen pot. Have three medium carrots and three turnips cut in small dice pieces, twelve small white onions, four small shallots, one bean garlic, having the shallots and garlic finely hashed together, one bay leaf, sprig of thyme, one clove and one ounce raw lean bacon cut in small dices; then add all these ingredients to the chicken. Moisten with two gills broth, two gills cider and one gill tomato sauce. Season with a light teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, two saltspoons grated nutmeg, and add half teaspoon finely chopped parsley and one ounce butter. Place the lid on the pan. Prepare a little dough with a little flour and water, and carefully arrange it around the lid to prevent evaporation from escaping. Place the pot in the oven two hours. Remove, detach the crust, place the pot on a round dish and send to the table without uncovering.
A sealed-pot braise of a whole small chicken with root vegetables, cider and bacon. The dough seal is the point of the dish, so plan for it before the pot goes in the oven.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given; the cook was expected to judge the heat of her own range. A steady 325F for the two hours suits a sealed pot and a 2 1/2 lb bird; the crust of dough will brown and harden but should not scorch.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so the liquid is 1 cup broth, 1 cup cider and 1/2 cup tomato sauce. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon, making the nutmeg about half a teaspoon.
- The sealThe flour-and-water paste (luting paste) should be a stiff, barely tacky dough rolled into a rope and pressed into the join between pot and lid. It is not eaten; it exists to trap steam and aroma so the pot can be opened at the table. A tight-fitting Dutch oven works, but the paste gives the theatrical release of scent the recipe is built around.
- CiderThe recipe does not say whether sweet or fermented; American books of the period used the word for both. Dry hard cider is the safer choice here, giving acidity to balance the tomato and bacon, where a sweet cider can read as cloying.
- "One bean garlic" and "one clove"A bean of garlic is a single clove, minced with the shallots. The lone "clove" immediately after is the spice, whole; both appear in one sentence and are easily conflated.
- SaltThe interior gets 1/2 teaspoon and the braise a further light teaspoon, plus an ounce of bacon and a cup of broth. If your broth is commercial and salted, cut the second addition by half and correct at the table.
- DonenessTwo hours at 325F takes a small chicken well past 165F in the thigh, which is intended here; the bird should be falling from the bone rather than sliced. Since the pot is not to be opened, judge by weight and time rather than probing.
- Yield and serviceA 2 1/2 lb chicken with this quantity of vegetables serves three, four at a stretch. Carry the sealed pot to the table on its dish, crack the crust in front of the diners, and carve in the pot so nothing is lost of the liquid.
Scheveningen is the seaside district of The Hague, a fashionable Dutch bathing resort in the decades either side of 1900, and the sort of place whose name attached itself to hotel dishes as a mark of cosmopolitan travel. The naming habit is one often associated with Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, whose International Cook Book ran through hundreds of dishes tagged with European cities, spas and personages for an American readership that liked its menus to sound well-travelled; on the strength of its name alone, this dish would not be out of place among them. The technique underneath the name is older and thoroughly French: en cocotte lutée, a bird sealed into an earthenware pot with a rope of flour paste so that nothing escapes until the lid is broken at table. Cider as the braising liquid points to the apple-growing north, Normandy above all, and the combination of cider, bacon and root vegetables is familiar from provincial French cooking, though the path by which it came to carry a Dutch resort's name cannot be traced.