PILLAU FOWL, based on M. Soyer’s Recipe (an Indian Dish).
Ingredients.—1 lb. of rice, 2 oz. of butter, a fowl, 2 quarts of stock or good broth, 40 cardamum-seeds, ½ oz. of coriander-seed, ¼ oz. of cloves, ¼ oz. of allspice, ¼ oz. of mace, ¼ oz. of cinnamon, ½ oz. of peppercorns, 4 onions, 6 thin slices of bacon, 2 hard-boiled eggs. Mode.—Well wash 1 lb. of the best Patna rice, put it into a frying-pan with the butter, which keep moving over a slow fire until the rice is lightly browned. Truss the fowl as for boiling, put it into a stewpan with the stock or broth; pound the spices and seeds thoroughly in a mortar, tie them in a piece of muslin, and put them in with the fowl. Let it boil slowly until it is nearly done; then add the rice, which should stew until quite tender and almost dry; cut the onions into slices, sprinkle them with flour, and fry, without breaking them, of a nice brown colour. Have ready the slices of bacon curled and grilled, and the eggs boiled hard. Lay the fowl in the form of a pyramid upon a dish, smother with the rice, garnish with the bacon, fried onions, and the hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters, and serve very hot. Before taking the rice out, remove the spices. Time.—½ hour to stew the fowl without the rice; ½ hour with it. Average cost, 4s. 3d. Sufficient for 4 or 5 persons. Seasonable at any time.