We have extracted this receipt from a clever little work called the “Hand-Book of Cookery.”
HASHED FOWL. (ENTRÉE.)
After having taken off in joints, as much of a cold fowl or fowls as will suffice for a dish, bruise the bodies with a paste roller, pour to them a pint of water, and boil them for an hour and a half to two hours, with the addition of a little pepper and salt only, or with a small quantity of onion, carrot, and savoury herbs. Strain, and skim the fat from the gravy, put it into a clean saucepan, and, should it require thickening, stir to it, when it boils, half a teaspoonful of flour smoothly mixed with a small bit of butter; add a little mushroom catsup, or other store-sauce, with a slight seasoning of mace or nutmeg. Lay in the fowl, and keep it near the fire until it is heated quite through, and is at the point of boiling: serve it with fried sippets round the dish. For a hash of higher relish, add to the bones when they are first stewed down a large onion minced and browned in butter, and before the fowl is dished, add some cayenne and the juice of half a lemon.
FRENCH AND OTHER RECEIPTS FOR MINCED FOWL. (ENTRÉE.)
Raise from the bones all the more delicate parts of the flesh of either cold roast, or of cold boiled fowls, clear it from the skin, and keep it covered from the air until it is wanted for use. Boil the bones well bruised, and the skin, with three quarters of a pint of water until reduced quite half; then strain the gravy and let it cool; next, having first skimmed off the fat, put it into a clean saucepan, with a quarter of a pint of cream, an ounce and a half of butter well mixed with a dessertspoonful of flour, and a little pounded mace, and grated lemon-rind; keep these stirred until they boil, then put in the fowl, finely minced, with three or four hard-boiled eggs chopped small, and sufficient salt, and white pepper or cayenne, to season it properly. Shake the mince over the fire until it is just ready to boil, stir to it quickly a squeeze of lemon-juice, dish it with pale sippets of fried bread, and serve it immediately. When cream cannot easily be obtained, use milk, with a double quantity of butter and flour. To make an English mince, omit the hard eggs, heat the fowl in the preceding sauce or in a common béchamel, or white sauce, dish it with small delicately poached eggs (those of the guinea-fowl or bantam for example), laid over it in a circle and send it quickly to table. Another excellent variety of the dish is also made by covering the fowl thickly with very fine bread-crumbs, moistening them with clarified butter, and giving them colour with a salamander, or in a quick oven.[[90]]
[90]. For minced fowl and oysters, follow the receipt for veal, page [231].
FRITOT OF COLD FOWLS.
Cut into joints and take the skin from some cold fowls lay them into a deep dish, strew over them a little fine salt and cayenne, add the juice of a lemon, and let them remain for an hour, moving them occasionally that they may all absorb a portion of the acid; then dip them one by one into some French batter (see Chapter [V].), and fry them a pale brown over a gentle fire. Serve them garnished with very green crisped parsley. A few drops of eschalot vinegar may be mixed with the lemon-juice which is poured to the fowls, or slices of raw onion or eschalot, and small branches of sweet herbs may be laid amongst them, and cleared off before they are dipped into the batter. Gravy made of the trimmings, thickened, and well flavoured, may be sent to table with them in a tureen; and dressed bacon (see page [259]), in a dish apart.
SCALLOPS OF FOWL AU BÉCHAMEL. (ENTRÉE.)
Raise the flesh from a couple of fowls as directed for cutlets in the foregoing receipt, and take it as entire as possible from either side of the breast; strip off the skin, lay the fillets flat, and slice them into small thin scallops; dip them one by one into clarified butter, and arrange them evenly in a delicately clean and not large frying-pan; sprinkle a seasoning of fine salt over, and just before the dish is wanted for table, fry them quickly without allowing them to brown; drain them well from the butter, pile them in the centre of a hot dish, and sauce them with some boiling béchamel. This dish may be quickly prepared by taking a ready-dressed fowl from the spit or stewpan, and by raising the fillets, and slicing the scallops into the boiling sauce before they have had time to cool.