943. INGREDIENTS.—A pair of fowls, 1 pint of Béchamel, No, 367, a few bunches of boiled brocoli or cauliflower.
Mode.—Truss and boil the fowls by recipe No. 938; make a pint of Béchamel sauce by recipe No. 367; pour some of this over the fowls, and the remainder send to table in a tureen. Garnish the dish with bunches of boiled cauliflowers or brocoli, and serve very hot. The sauce should be made sufficiently thick to adhere to the fowls; that for the tureen should be thinned by adding a spoonful or two of stock.
Time.—From 1/2 to 1 hour, according to size.
Average cost, in full season, 5s. a pair.
Sufficient for 6 or 7 persons.
Seasonable all the year, but scarce in early spring.
SPACE FOR FOWLS.—We are no advocates for converting the domestic fowl into a cage-bird. We have known amateur fowl-keepers—worthy souls, who would butter the very barley they gave their pets, if they thought they would the more enjoy it—coop up a male bird and three or four hens in an ordinary egg-chest placed on its side, and with the front closely barred with iron hooping! This system will not do. Every animal, from man himself to the guinea-pig, must have what is vulgarly, but truly, known as "elbow-room;" and it must be self-evident how emphatically this rule applies to winged animals. It may be urged, in the case of domestic fowls, that from constant disuse, and from clipping and plucking, and other sorts of maltreatment, their wings can hardly be regarded as instruments of flight; we maintain, however, that you may pluck a fowl's wing-joints as bare as a pumpkin, but you will not erase from his memory that he is a fowl, and that his proper sphere is the open air. If he likewise reflects that he is an ill-used fowl—a prison-bird—he will then come to the conclusion, that there is not the least use, under such circumstances, for his existence; and you must admit that the decision is only logical and natural.
BOILED FOWL, with Oysters.
(Excellent.)
944. INGREDIENTS.—1 young fowl, 3 dozen oysters, the yolks of 2 eggs, 1/4 pint of cream.