Dressed Game and Poultry a la Mode

Excerpt

DRESSED GAME AND POULTRY

À LA MODE.

Blackbird Pie.

Stuff the birds with the crumb of a French roll soaked in a little milk, which put in a stewpan with 1-1/2 ounces of butter, a chopped shalot, some parsley, pepper, salt, a grate of nutmeg, and the yolks of two small eggs. Stir over the fire till it becomes a thick paste, and fill the insides of the birds with it. Line the bottom of the pie-dish with fried collops of rump steak, and place the birds on them neatly. Add four hard-boiled yolks of eggs, and pour gravy all over, cover with puff paste, and bake for one hour and a quarter.

Cut the meat from a cold boiled fowl, in small pieces. Stew down the bones in one pint of water, a bouquet garni, add a little salt and white pepper to taste. Then strain the stock, add to it three or four peeled mushrooms finely minced, and let them cook in this sauce; when done put in the pieces of fowl to warm through, thicken with the yolks of two eggs. Add lemon juice and serve hot.

Blanquette of Chicken aux Concombres.

Boil a chicken and cut it into neat joints. Cut a cucumber in pieces and fry in butter, put them in a little stock, which reduce; have reduced half a pint of velouté sauce with a few trimmings of cucumber in it. Pour this through a tammy over the fowls, set it on the fire, and as soon as it bubbles add a liaison of three yolks of eggs, work in a little butter and lemon juice, drain the pieces of cucumber in a cloth, throw them in, and serve them in an open vol au vent, garnished with flowers of puff paste.

Take the remains of a cold fowl or turkey, and cut it into neat joints. Chop up three or four mushrooms, some parsley, a shalot, and a piece of butter the size of a walnut, and let all fry together for a short time; then moisten with a little good-flavoured stock, and thicken with flour. Add salt to taste, let the sauce boil well, put in the pieces of bird for a few minutes; take them out, arrange them on a dish, pour the sauce over, and serve.

Chicken à la Bonne Femme.

Cut up a chicken into joints, warm up three onions and three turnips in butter; when brown add the pieces of fowl. Season with salt and pepper, sauté over the fire for ten minutes. Then stir in two tablespoonfuls of flour, and five minutes after add a tumblerful of stock, a wineglass of white wine, a bouquet of mixed herbs, and half a pound of peeled tomatoes, with all the pips carefully removed. Cook over a slow fire for twenty-five minutes, add about half a pound of mushrooms peeled and cut up to the size of a shilling, leave it on the fire for ten minutes; take out the bouquet of herbs, season with an ounce of finely-chopped parsley, dish up the pieces of chicken in a pyramid, and pour the sauce and vegetables over.

Braise the drumsticks, and arrange them uprightly in tent fashion, and all around and between the drumsticks should be finely chopped salad. Alternate slices of tongue and ham should be placed at the edge of the salad, and the border of the dish ornamented with thin rounds of beetroot.

Chickens Chiringrate.

Cut off the feet of a chicken, break the breastbone flat, but be careful not to break the skin. Flour it and fry it in butter, drain all the fat out of the pan, but leave the chicken in. Make a farce from half a pound of fillet of beef, half a pound of veal, ten ounces of cooked ham, a shalot, a bouquet garni, and a piece of carrot, pepper, and salt; cook in stock, and then pass it through a sieve, and lay this farce over the chicken. After stewing the chicken for a quarter of an hour, make a rich gravy from the stock, and add a few mushrooms and two spoonfuls of port wine; boil all up well, and pour over and around the chicken.

Beat up two eggs with butter, pepper, salt, and lemon-juice; then cut up the fowls, dip them in the egg paste, and roll them in crumbs and fried parsley....