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Howtowdie
(Scotland.) Clean, truss, and stuff a fine fowl with a forcemeat of veal, bread, herbs, and yolk of egg. Brown it in a pan with 4 ounces of butter or drippings; add 1/2 pint good stock, and cook, with some parsley, thyme, salt, 6 small onions, and a bayleaf, for an hour, tightly closed. Serve with a border of cooked greens.
A pot-roasted stuffed chicken, essentially braised in a covered pan on the stovetop. The recipe is workable as written; a few of its terms and quantities need translating.
- The fowlA "fine fowl" in this period often meant an older boiling bird, tougher and more flavourful than a modern broiler. A 4-5 lb chicken will do, but at that size an hour tightly covered is about right only if the pan is genuinely sealed; check the thigh reads 165F before serving.
- Half a pint of stockRead as an Imperial half-pint this is about 10 fl oz or 1 1/4 cups; a US half-pint would be 8 fl oz. Either way it should come no more than a third of the way up the bird — this is a braise, not a boil.
- Four ounces of butterHalf a cup for browning is generous by modern standards. Two to three tablespoons will brown the skin adequately; the rest simply enriches the pan liquid.
- The forcemeatVeal, breadcrumbs, herbs and egg yolk with no proportions given. A workable ratio is equal weights of minced veal and fresh crumbs, bound with one or two yolks per pound, seasoned assertively. Stuff loosely so the centre heats through.
- Tightly closedThe hinge of the dish. Without a close lid — or a sheet of parchment pressed under it — the small amount of liquid boils away and the bird roasts dry rather than steams.
- Cooked greensTraditionally spinach or kale, wilted and well drained. Squeeze out the water before making the border or it will thin the pan juices.
- The missing eggsHowtowdie is classically served wi' drappit eggs, poached eggs set on the greens around the bird. This version omits them; adding one per person is faithful to the dish.
- YieldServes four to six, depending on the size of the bird, with the pan liquid strained and served as a thin gravy.
Howtowdie is one of the older Scots kitchen words to survive into print, and it names the bird rather than the method: it is generally traced to the Old French hetoudeau, a young pullet that has not yet begun to lay. In Scotland the name attached itself to this particular treatment — a stuffed young hen pot-roasted with onions and herbs and sent up on a bed of spinach or kale, most often with poached eggs, the drappit eggs, set around it. The technique itself is older than the name: sealing a fowl in a covered pot with a little stock was a way to cook tough poultry on a hearth long before ovens were common in ordinary houses.