Welsh Poultry Recipes from 1867
Recipes gathered from a Welsh hermit, including boiled fowl, parsley sauce, and chicken fricassee.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Good Cookery Illustrated by Augusta Llanover, 1867.
Boiled Fowl
Weight of fowl, three and a half lbs.; a quarter of a pint of cold water to each pound. Fill the outer vessel with water, and let it simmer very slowly for two hours and a quarter, unless the meat of the fowl is tender and fit for eating sooner, which can be proved by trying it with a fork. Pour off the broth, which ought to be about a pint of strong chicken broth, and when cold will be a jelly.
The bones of the chicken, after the meat is eaten (or all taken off), are to be broken up, and stewed in a digester for two or three hours, with a pint of water to every pound of bones; then pour the liquor off, which ought to produce about half a pint of jelly, and the bones are to be rebroken, and put into the digester again, with a pint of water to every pound of bones, which will, of course, weigh less than before the first stewing. They are to remain between one and two hours stewing, then pour off the liquor, which ought to produce more than a quarter of a pint of jelly.
The bones to be broken the third time, and subjected to the same process, with a pint of water to the pounds their weight being again diminished: the liquor ought to produce a quarter of a pint of jelly. Thus, a fowl or three pounds and a half weight will, under proper management, on an average, produce, besides the meat, more than a quart of jelly stock, first and last, including the pint produced by the first boiling.
N.B. — It must be remembered that slight differences as to produce will be found, according to the sort, the quality, or condition of poultry, as well as butcher's meat: but the receipts given in this work have been written down from actual practical experiments, often repeated, and the variations in the produce are, on an average, trifling, excepting where the meat has been very fat and when that is the case in butcher's meat, the same quantity of jelly stock must never be expected as when the meat is lean, inasmuch as the fat will not produce gravy; consequently, when there is a great overplus of fat, less water should be allowed to the weight of meat.
In the proceeds from the Hermit's fowl, the oil on the top of the jelly from the first boiling measured a quarter of a pint, and the fat collected from the surface of all the jellies amounted to a quarter of a pint.
Total produce of Hermit's fowl (besides the meat): —
Jelly stock, 1 quart.
Oil “ ½ of a pint.
Fat “ ½ of a pint.
Parsley Sauce for Boiled Fowl
Two ounces of fresh butter, cut in little bits, put into a double saucepan, with as much flour as will make it into a stiff paste; then add two tablespoonfuls of milk; stir well, add six tablespoonfuls of water, continue to stir till it is quite hot and the thickness of good cream. The above is now plain melted butter, and ready for parsley sauce, which must be made by previously having had the parsley washed very clean, and picking every leaf off the stems; put a small teaspoonful of salt into half a pint of boiling water, boil the parsley in this for ten minutes, drain it on a sieve, mince it fine, or bruise it to a pulp, and stir it into the melted butter prepared as above described.
Fricasseed Cold Chicken
Chop very fine leek-roots, celery, a small quantity of turnip, and some persons like a little carrot. Put the whole into a saucepan with sufficient top fat (if from chicken stock all the better) to form a thick pulp when thoroughly incorporated with the chopped vegetables (the whole of the vegetables together being about two ounces), stir briskly over the fire for ten minutes; then shake in as much flour as will make it a stiff paste, stirring well for five minutes longer, then put the whole into a double saucepan in which is three-quarters of a pint of chicken stock, which has been previously warmed, and after well stirring, again leave it to stew slowly for three-quarters of an hour, then pass the whole through a wire sieve into a basin, and pour what is strained back into the double, adding two tablespoonfuls of cream, after which the flavour must be improved as required, by stirring round a sprig of orange thyme, or any other herb wanted, and, if the flavour of celery and onions is not sufficient, it is now to be increased by stirring round pieces of either of those vegetables, and taking them out as soon as sufficient taste is obtained.
The meat of the cold chicken is to be cut or pulled into long pointed pieces, and put into the sauce, where, being well stirred, it is to remain until thoroughly warmed through, and the chicken flavour imparted to the sauce. This will take a few minutes more or less according to the heat to which the hot water on the outside is exposed, — the slower the better, as, if the water is kept fiercely boiling instead of barely simmering, the chicken will be beat to pieces; whereas having already been once dressed, it ought only to be done the second time sufficiently to have the chicken flavour imported to the sauce, and the flavour of the sauce absorbed by the chicken.
In the Hermit's mode of cookery in separate double vessels, any dishes can be kept warm without injury for a long while, should the dinner by any accident be retarded.
Llanover, Augusta. Good Cookery Illustrated and Recipes Communicated by the Welsh Hermit of the Cell of St. Gover, with Various Remarks on Many Things Past and Present. Richard Bentley, 1867.
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