“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,”—
“Proscrivez sans pitié ces poulets domestiques,
Nourris en votre cour et constamment étiques,
Toujours mal engraissés par des soins ignorants;
Ne connaissez que ceux de la Bresse ou du Mans.”