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Chicken, Wilhelmina
Cut off head and feet, singe, draw, wipe and truss a tender two-and-a-half-pound chicken, place it in saucepan with a small piece butter, season with teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, and brown it on range until a nice golden colour. Cut two ounces lean raw ham in one-third-inch-square pieces and add to chicken with six very small, peeled, raw potatoes and twelve small white onions. Add also a blade each thyme, and bay leaf, and one "foelie" nutmeg. Sprinkle over a half teaspoon salt, pour in two gills water, cover pan, let briskly cook for five minutes, set it at side of brisk fire and let simmer for one hour. Pour in a half gill sherry and let cook for twenty-five minutes, dress chicken on a large dish, untruss, arrange garnishing around, pour gravy over and serve.
A braised whole chicken in the Dutch manner, written for a cook who bought birds with the heads still on. The method is sound; the vocabulary and one or two of the timings need translation.
- "Foelie"Dutch for mace, the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg seed. A "blade" of mace is one flat piece; about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace stands in, though the whole blade is easier to fish out later.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. Two gills of water is one cup; the half gill of sherry at the end is a quarter cup. Use a dry or medium sherry, not cream sherry.
- The birdA two-and-a-half-pound chicken is small by modern standards and is what makes the timing work. If your bird is four pounds, expect the breast to be dry by the end of ninety minutes of simmering; a 3 lb bird is the closest common size.
- "Brisk fire" and "side of the fire"The first is high heat, the second is the cooler edge of a coal range. On a modern hob: bring to a boil, then drop to the lowest setting that keeps a bare tremble at the surface. The recipe itself never uses an oven, but if you prefer one, a low oven of around 325F will hold a covered pot at a similar gentle heat.
- When to add the vegetablesSix small potatoes and twelve onions will not survive ninety minutes of simmering intact. Add them for the last thirty to forty minutes if you want them whole for the garnish, or accept that they will collapse into the gravy and thicken it.
- Lean raw hamNot cured-and-cooked deli ham. Use raw or dry-cured ham — pancetta, speck, or a piece of gammon — cut in the third-inch dice specified, so it renders and seasons the braise rather than sitting in it.
- Trussing and drawingA supermarket bird arrives drawn and singed. Truss it anyway: it keeps the legs from splaying and the breast from drying while the pot is covered.
- The gravyOne cup of water plus the sherry leaves a thin, well-flavoured liquor rather than a sauce. Lift the chicken out, reduce hard for a few minutes, and swirl in a knob of butter before pouring it over.
- YieldServes four, with the potatoes and onions as the whole of the accompaniment.
The name points to Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands from 1890 to 1948, and the dish belongs to the run of turn-of-the-century restaurant preparations christened after reigning monarchs that also produced garnishes named for Edward VII and various empresses. The Dutch signature here is not the chicken but the seasoning: foelie, mace, is the spice the Netherlands controlled through the nutmeg trade of the Banda Islands, and it turns up in Dutch braises, meatballs and stews. Retaining the Dutch word in an English-language cookbook keeps that provenance visible on the page.