CHAPTER XI.
POULTRY.
The term Poultry, includes all the domesticated birds reared for the table—fowls, capons, turkeys, geese, ducks, and guinea fowl. Those who live in the country and intend to rear fowls for the consumption of their families, should have a poultry-yard, called by the French, a basse cour. It should be well sheltered, with a warm aspect, and sufficiently inclined to be always dry. It should also be supplied with sand or ashes, and there should be also a supply of running water, of which poultry are fond. A green patch of earth should be next to the poultry-yard, to allow the fowls free exercise. Poultry are the better for high feeding from the very shell, and on this account it is advisable to give them the heaviest corn. Even young chickens may be put for feeding as soon as the hen has ceased to regard them. When chickens are wanted for domestic purposes, they should be left at liberty in the farm-yard, and if they have plenty of food they will be soon fit for the table, and rich and juicy in flavour. Nowhere do you get these young and juicy chickens better than at the country inns in Ireland and Scotland. As soon as fowls are sufficiently fat, they should be killed, or they will lose flesh and become unhealthy. Turkeys are more delicate to rear in their infancy than fowls, but they become hardy as they grow older. When well-grown, turkeys supply themselves in their ramblings, so that they require no food but at leaving their homes in the morning, and returning at night. After six months, turkeys may be crammed, as is practised with fowls; but they require a much longer period to render them fully fat for the table. Guinea fowls are in the season greatly prized at London dinner tables. The same food appropriated to the young of gallinaceous fowls and turkeys, is good for guinea chicks.
The white duck being the largest of the domesticated kind, is the best for the poulterer, though it is not usually considered so delicate in flavour as the dark coloured. The grand object of preparing poultry of all kinds as speedily as possible for the table, is effected by supplying them with dry, soft, and green food, by keeping them thoroughly clean, and by affording them water and exercise ground.
Of the wholesomeness of poultry, as an article of diet, Lémery thus speaks in his “Traité des Aliments:”—
“Their flesh is pectoral, easily digested, produces good juice, is very nourishing, increases the spirits, moistens and cools, and is very proper for macerated persons, that are recovering from sickness. Avicen pretends, it makes the understanding more quick and lively, and that it clears the voice.
“It agrees at all times, with any age and constitution: in the meantime it is better for nice persons, and such as lead an idle life, than for those who are strong, robust, and used to a violent exercise or hard labour, seeing these last require more solid food, and that does not so easily waste.”
“Some persons,” he goes on to say, “formerly were of opinion, that the eating of hens, chickens, and capons, caused the gout; and perhaps there were two things that gave occasion for this popular error. First, these animals are subject to the same disease, and consequently may impart it to those who feed upon them; but it would follow from hence, that we must contract all the diseases of every animal we eat of, which we find otherwise by experience. Secondly, they were inclined to this opinion, from a consideration that those who lead an idle life, fare high, and feed upon juicy and nice food, such as chickens and capons, are more afflicted with the gout than others; but it is not because these people live usually upon capons and chickens, that they are subject to this distemper, but rather by reason of the idle life they lead, and the excess they go to in all sorts of pleasures. In short, if it were true that the eating of these fowls brought the gout upon us, we should see nothing else but gouty persons everywhere; for we may say, that there is now-a-days no food more common than poultry.”
Of capons, this famous doctor thus speaks:—
“Their flesh is very nourishing, it produces good juice, is restorative, recovers decayed strength, good for the phthisic and consumptions, easy of digestion; and they often make broth of it, in order to fortify and recover strength. The flesh of a capon is in virtue and taste much like unto that of a chicken; in the mean time, that of a capon is more nourishing, pleasant and properer for people used to fatigue than the other; and the reason is, because this same flesh contains juices that are more concocted, digested, and fuller of oily balsamic particles.”
When poultry is brought into the kitchen for use, it should be kept as cool as possible. The best position in which to place it is with the breast downwards, on a shelf or marble slab. The crop and the gut of the rump should be taken out. Choose fowls with a thin transparent skin, white and delicate. Pigeons full fledged, are heating and hard to digest. The younger they are in general the better, and in Italy, where pigeons are much used, they are always eaten young.
In choosing turkeys, select the brown Norfolk; but if you can find any of the red American breed, the flavour is still finer.
I have said in another chapter that the finest fowl in the world is the poularde du Mans, in the department of La Sarthe. Here is a true description of the manner in which that fine flavour which they possess is given to the bird:—
“It is to the feeding on barley, and to that only, that the fine flavour of the poularde du Mans and of La Fleche is to be traced. This is one of the joys and delights of a gourmand, and if you have a little farm, or even a trifle of a garden, you can fatten your own fowl. With a little care and time, you will have fowls and capons of an exquisite flavour. Feed them with ground barley, mixed with bran and milk, for some days, and then put them in a cage in a dark, dry spot. Give them as much farinaceous barley and milk as they can swallow. But mind, above and before all things, to separate the little cocks from the hens. This is indispensable, and must be rigorously observed. In a fortnight or three weeks your fowls will have acquired a fine and delicate obesity. ‘Beware,’ said Brillat de Savarin, ‘of the turkey poults of the neighbourhood of Paris. They have a bitterness which revolts a delicate palate, for they are fed on stale crusts, horse-chestnuts, and sour vegetables.’”
The ordinary barn-door fowl, for which so many of us are compelled to pay 5s. 6d. in the month of May, at the West-end poulterers, is thus remorselessly treated by a French gourmand, Berchoux, in his poem “La Gastronomie,”—
A fowl or chicken should be kept some time before it is cooked. If cooked immediately on being killed, as is frequently the case at country inns in Ireland and Scotland, even a young fowl is tough. Horace’s method of rendering a fowl tender is well remembered by every Etonian:—
“Poultry,” says M. Brillat Savarin, “is to the kitchen that which canvas is to the painter, or Fortunatus’ wishing cap to the charlatan. Poultry may be served boiled, roasted, fried, hot or cold, whole or in parts, with or without sauce, boned or unboned, devilled, grilled, or farced, and always with equal success.” To my thinking, the best fowls in France are those “du Mans,” in the department of La Sarthe; but M. Brillat Savarin holds those of Caux in Normandy, and de la Bresse, to be equally good. The poularde of Montalbanois en Quercy is excellent.
For ages roast poultry has been a favourite dish in England. Shakespeare, who knew every thing, from heaven-born philosophy down to humblest household affairs, puts into the mouth of Justice Shallow directions for a dinner, which might be eaten with relish now-a-days. “Some pigeons, Davy; a couple of short-legged hens (the true criterion of goodness), a joint of mutton, and any pretty, little tiny kickshaws.” A capon in his day was as much relished as now, and the cost, according to the papers found in the pocket of Falstaff, was, a capon 2s. 2d., sauce 4d., sack, two gallons, 5s. 8d., bread, a halfpenny.
Our roasting of poultry, though not so excellent as our roasting of beef and mutton, is yet very good, and unless a host be sure of his cook, he had better order for his guest a roast capon, a roast fowl, or a roast or boiled turkey. The turkey, either roast or boiled is excellent, and the same remark applies to fowl. If served boiled, nothing is better than good celery sauce, either with fowl or turkey. There are scores of ways of serving a poularde in France. There is the poularde rôtie, the poularde au gros sel, the poularde à la bourgeoise, the poularde à la Montmorency, à la Marseillaise, à la Tartare, au suprême, invented by Beauvilliers, and à la Grimod de la Reynière.
There are also various entrées of fowl and chicken, such as poulets à la reine, à la regence, à la Montmorency, à l’ivoire; and various fricassées, as, à la chevalière, à la Saint Lambert, à la financière, à la Bourguinonne, à la Villeroi, and tutti quanti; but it is necessary to say, that to produce these entrées, or the filets de poulet à la royale, or cotellettes de cuisses de poulets à la perigueux, or à suprême de volaille, one must have an accomplished cook.
The sooner we multiply schools of cookery for entrées and entremets, the better. There are a couple or three existing already, I believe: one in Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square; one in Charles Street, Middlesex Hospital; and one in Berners Street, Oxford Street. But there ought to be twenty times as many. Nothing is so difficult to obtain as a good cook, and yet higher wages are paid to male and female cooks than to any other class of servants.
There is an immense consumption of turkeys at Paris, at Christmas time, and a much larger consumption in London. In the days of stages, the Norfolk coaches were stowed with turkeys from the middle of December to Twelfth-day; and in our day the goods traffic on the Norfolk Railway is more than trebled during Christmas. In the “Physiologie du Goût,” of Brillat Savarin, under the head “Influence financière du Dindon,” is the following remark:—
“I have some reason to think, that from the commencement of November to the end of February, 300 truffled turkeys are daily consumed in Paris, making a total of 36,000 turkeys. Calculate the value of these.”
The English have yet to learn the general use of the truffle with the turkey. A rich bourgeois of Paris will go to the expense of from 60 to 75 francs for a first-rate turkey for his rôti, and will afterwards disburse from 70 to 100 francs in truffles to season the bird. We have no idea of this expenditure in England, nor do our higher and better classes use or consume truffles as they ought to be used. Chaptal, who was one of Napoleon’s Ministers of the Interior in France, published a work, “Sur l’Industrie Française,” in 1819. In it he speaks of the enormous quantities of fowls in France:—
“In order to have an idea (says the Comte de Chaptal) of the enormous quantity of fowls of all species which exists in France, it will suffice to observe, that there are annually sold at the markets of Toulouse 120,000 geese, which are fattened in the neighbourhood; and M. Lavoisier has estimated the number of eggs consumed at Paris, on an average of several years, at 78,000,000, and the number of fowls at 39,000,000. Supposing the price of each to be a franc, including the cocks, this would give a capital of 41,600,000 francs. If to this be added the value of hens and cocks, of turkeys, geese, ducks, and pigeons renewed almost every year, the amount may be augmented by 10,000,000; so that the capital for fowls of all species amounts to 51,600,000 francs.”
Some exquisites and Muscadins of the second Empire maintain that there is nothing “si Chaussée d’Antin,” nothing “si lourdement bourgeois” as a dinde aux truffes, as a plat de rôt. Let these coxcombs rail on. The dinde aux truffes, as a Christmas Parisian dish, will survive them and the false gods of their idolatry. Of the turkey, Nonius says, “Egre giè alunt et bonum succum corpori suppeditant.”[17]
Some writers, such as Athenæus, Ælian, and Aristotle, would have us believe that turkeys were known to the ancients under the name of Meleagrides, but this is a mistake. It is a nice question when turkeys first appeared in France, and who first introduced them. La Mare, in his “Traité de la Police,” would have it that it was Jaques Cœur, the treasurer of Charles VII.; but this is also an error. According to Champier, who wrote his treatise “De Re Cibariâ,” in 1560, they were only introduced into France a few years before he wrote. Here are his words:—“Venere in Gallias, annos abhinc paucos, aves quædam externæ, quas gallinas indicas appellant: credo quoniam ex Insulis Indiæ nuper à Lusitanis Hispanisque palefactæ, primum invectæ fuerunt in urbem nostrum.”
In the French poets of the thirteenth century, and in authors still more ancient, there is frequent mention of capons. Madame de Sevigné speaks of the “poulardes de Cân,” and of the “bonnes poulardes de Rennes.”
In Regnard’s “Comedy du Bal,” A.D. 1696, the author speaks in praise of “les poulardes de Caux.” Long—nearly a century—antecedent to this, our own Shakespeare, had used the word “capon” again and again; and again Le Grand d’Aussy contends that the Gauls learned the art of fattening and cramming fowls from the Romans. Crammed fowls were from early times more esteemed in France than any others. Among the officers of the Royal household in France in early times, was a crammer of fowls. An ordonnance of St. Louis dated in 1261, more than six centuries ago, gives to this officer the name of poulailler.
Our neighbours on the other side of the Straits of Dover are not only very fond of fowls and capons, but of much smaller birds. They eat thrushes, blackbirds, and robin red-breasts. Dr. Roques, in his “Fragments sur les Plantes usuelles,” thus speaks of this liking for smaller birds:—
“The taste for blackbirds and thrushes has passed from the ancients to the moderns. These birds are much esteemed in Germany, and in our southern provinces. The blackbirds of Corsica and Provence are renowned, above all renowned as they feed on myrtle and juniper-berries. Cardinal Fesch, archbishop of Lyons, had a supply every year from Corsica. One dined at the house of his eminence partly because of his agreeable manners, partly for the noble and gracious reception he gave you, but, also, for his blackbirds, which were of exquisite flavour. More than one Lyonnese gourmand impatiently waited for the archiepiscopal clock to strike six. Then it was that these delicate little birds appeared upon the table, their delicious perfume charming all the guests. Their appearance, their seductive tournure, were also admired. Their backs were garnished with a small bouquet of fried sage, in some sort imitating the tail with which they were furnished when they poured forth their notes from the elm and hawthorn. ‘But what,’ the reader will exclaim, ‘you do not speak of the fine oil in which these beautiful birds were baked, nor of the agreeable rôtis, whose bitterness strengthened your stomach, while it perfumed your mouth?’ You are right, judicious reader.”
Although the poulterers in London truss all the different animals which they send home, yet, as it often happens, that untrussed game and poultry are sent to private families from the country, it is necessary that the art of trussing should be known by every cook.