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Henry Iv.'s Recipe for Boiled Chicken
Henry the Fourth was that beloved king of France who said that he wanted the poor man to have a fowl in a casserole every Sunday--since the peasants were terribly poor and taxed before that time. He was a jolly fellow and came from a part of France famous for good cooking. Clean a fat hen, singe it, and then chop the liver with 1 cup of bread-crumbs or more, if needful, 1/2 pound of ham, 1/2 cup of milk, 6 chestnuts and 6 truffles, nutmeg, parsley, thyme, sweet marjoram, and a grating of garlic or onion juice. Add the yolks of two eggs. Now fill the belly, the crop, and the cavities of the legs and wings, which must be boned and all tied firmly. Brown it in butter, add 2 carrots, 2 onions, sliced, 1/2 cup of rice, and a pint of water. Cover very closely and simmer for 1 hour. Serve with the sauce poured around or in the same dish in which it was cooked. Any one who has tried this will admit that it has a superior flavor.
CHICKEN ROYAL (invented for one of the early queens of France.). Bone a large fat chicken or a capon, fill it with a forcemeat of bread, herbs, mushrooms, eggs, and onion, seasoned and chopped. Truss it, lard it with bacon, and cover it with oiled paper. Bake in a pint of consomme, basting often. When tender, take off the paper, let it brown, reduce and strain the sauce, and serve with a puree of chestnuts, boiled, shelled, pounded, flavored with stock, and strained.
CHICKEN A LA MARENGO (invented for Napoleon, the night of the battle.). Joint and fry a tender chicken in 4 spoonfuls of olive oil, with three shallots, a clove of garlic, a bayleaf, some parsley, and thyme. When brown, take out and keep warm. Add to the oil 1 pint of white stock and the yolk of an egg. Stir until thick, strain, and pour over the chicken. Serve with a border of poached eggs, on strips of toast.
Three French set pieces run together in one entry, all of them built on the same idea: a bird boned, stuffed and cooked in a small amount of liquid. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how to bone poultry and who owns a lidded pot that will hold a whole hen snugly.
- The hinge: bone and tie before you stuffThe legs, wings and body are boned so the forcemeat can fill every cavity and the bird carves in even slices. If the trussing string is loose the stuffing escapes into the braising liquid and you are left with a pot of savoury porridge.
- "Casserole" means the potIn Henri IV's saying the vessel is a pot, and this dish is browned then covered closely and simmered on the stove rather than baked. A heavy lidded pot just wide enough to take the bird is the right vessel; too wide and a pint of water will not come far enough up the sides.
- A fat hen is not a supermarket chickenA stewing hen or boiling fowl is an older laying bird, tough and full of flavour, and one hour of simmering will not soften it. A 4-5 lb roasting chicken is the practical substitute and will take about the hour given; a genuine stewing hen wants two to three.
- CaponA castrated cockerel, larger and fatter than a hen, and now uncommon; usually a special order or a seasonal item. A 5-6 lb roasting chicken stands in for the Chicken Royal without any change to the method.
- Stuffing temperatureBread, liver, ham and egg yolks packed inside a bird heat slowly. Take the stuffing to 165F on a probe pushed into the centre of the cavity, not just the thigh meat, and rest the bird before untying.
- Truffles and chestnuts"Six truffles" most likely means six small whole black truffles; truffles were considerably more plentiful and cheaper around 1900 than they are now, though never cheap. A tablespoon of chopped preserved truffle, or a handful of cremini with a few drops of truffle oil, carries the idea. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts save an hour of peeling.
- The half cup of riceRice plus a pint of water under a tightly covered pot will swell and stick long before the hour is up. Keep the heat very low, or add the rice for the last twenty-five minutes and top up with stock as needed.
- Oiled paperButtered parchment, laid over the breast of the Chicken Royal and removed near the end so the skin can colour. Foil works but conducts more heat; parchment is closer to what was meant.
- The Marengo sauce will curdle if it boilsAn egg yolk stirred into a pint of hot stock is a thin liaison, not a hollandaise. Whisk a ladle of the hot liquid into the yolk first, return it to the pan off direct heat, and stir until it coats a spoon at around 170-175F. Above a simmer it scrambles.
- Ambiguous measure"4 spoonfuls of olive oil" is unspecified in the original; tablespoons is the sensible reading, giving about a quarter cup for frying a jointed bird.
- YieldEach of the three birds serves four to six. The Marengo, with its border of poached eggs on toast, is the lightest and the quickest of the three.
The line about a fowl in the pot every Sunday is the most famous thing attributed to Henri IV, and it is attributed rather than documented: it appears in print decades after his death in 1610, in Hardouin de Perefixe's admiring life of the king, and has been repeated as shorthand for royal benevolence ever since. Henri came from Bearn in the southwest, which is why cookbooks so often attach the stuffed poule au pot to his name; the dish itself is older and broader than any king. The other two entries carry the same kind of pedigree. Chicken Marengo is traditionally traced to the evening of 14 June 1800, when Napoleon's cook is said to have improvised a dish from what he could scavenge near the battlefield, and the traditional early versions include crayfish and a fried egg, of which the poached eggs on toast here may be a genteel descendant. That a cookbook of this period should present all three together, each labelled with a monarch, says a good deal about how French cooking was sold to English-speaking households: not as technique but as association, a way of setting a famous name on the table alongside the bird.