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Spatchcock
I small chopped onion I bouquet garni I shallot 2 bay leaves 1 sprig thyme 4 tablespoonfuls vinegar 1 pint (2 cups) brown sauce 1 teaspoonful meat extract 2 chopped gherkins 1/2 tablespoonful capers 1 teaspoonful chopped parsley Cut the chicken in half and season the inside of the bird with salt and pepper, chopped onion, and bouquet garni and allow to lie in a cool place for an hour. Brush the bird over with melted butter and grill it for twenty minutes, basting all the time. Sprinkle with browned bread crumbs, cook for ten minutes more, and serve the following sauce with it: Chop the shallot with the bay leaves and put them in a pan, add the thyme, pepper, and vinegar; simmer until the vinegar is reduced to half the quantity, then mix with it the brown sauce and meat extract and boil for ten minutes, rub through a sieve and add the gherkins, capers, and parsley. Make very hot and use.
To make the bouquet garni, tie together a piece of well-washed fresh parsley, a sprig of thyme, a sprig of marjoram, a bay leaf, a celery leaf, a small piece of cinnamon stick, a clove of garlic, a blade of mace, and a piece of green or red pepper. I tender chicken 1/2 lb. (I cup) rice
A split, flattened chicken under the broiler with a sharp brown sauce. The ingredient list has been jumbled in printing — the "1 tender chicken" and the half pound of rice appear at the end rather than the top, and the rice is never mentioned again in the method; treat it as a bed for serving.
- The hinge: flatten it properlyThe recipe says only to cut the bird in half; split it through both back and breastbone and press the halves flat with the heel of your hand or a weight so they are an even thickness. An unflattened half cooks unevenly under a broiler and the thigh will still be raw when the breast is browned.
- "Grill" means broilIn British usage of this period grilling is overhead heat — a broiler, or a gridiron over coals. Set the halves skin side up 5-6 inches under a hot broiler, or cook over medium coals, turning.
- Thirty minutes is optimisticTwenty minutes plus ten will not reliably cook a modern bird, which is larger than the "tender chicken" intended here. Cook until the thickest part of the thigh reads 165F; expect 35-45 minutes for a 3-3 1/2 lb chicken, and add the crumbs only for the last 8-10 minutes so they brown rather than burn.
- Brown sauceA pint (2 cups) of espagnole or demi-glace — a roux-thickened brown stock, not bottled steak sauce. Reduced veal or chicken stock thickened lightly with a brown roux does the job.
- Meat extractBovril or a similar concentrated beef extract, sold in jars. A teaspoon is for depth and salt; taste before adding more, since modern stock and extract together can turn the sauce very salty.
- Gherkins and capersThe gherkins meant are sour cornichons in vinegar, not the sweet pickle sold in American jars. Sweet pickles will fight the vinegar reduction.
- That bouquet garniCinnamon stick, mace, garlic and a piece of green or red pepper make this a good deal more assertive than the standard parsley-thyme-bay bundle; whether sweet pepper or chile is meant is not clear from the text. Tie it in cheesecloth if you want to fish it out easily; it flavors the bird during its hour of resting, not the sauce.
- Sauce order of workReduce the vinegar with shallot, bay and thyme by half, add the brown sauce and extract, boil ten minutes, then strain and add the gherkins, capers and parsley. The recipe then says to make it very hot; if you prefer, stir the garnish in off the heat and reheat gently, since hard boiling dulls the parsley and the capers' bite.
- YieldTwo generous servings, or three with the rice.
"Spatchcock" is generally traced to an Anglo-Irish contraction of "dispatch cock" — a bird killed, split and grilled quickly for an unexpected guest — and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century references treat it as fast, improvised cooking rather than a formal dish. By the time of books like this one the word had settled into two meanings that still coexist: the technique of splitting a bird flat, and a specific grilled preparation finished with browned crumbs. The sauce given here is the classic sauce piquante of the French repertoire, an acid reduction let down with espagnole and finished with gherkins and capers, which tells you something about the kitchen this book was written for: it assumes a pint of brown sauce is simply on hand, as it would have been in any household still keeping a stockpot going. The jar of meat extract standing in for part of that work is the modern intrusion, and a sign of the period.