Pick two handfuls of tarragon (the leaves from the stalks) and chop half of it fine with the livers of the fowls. Mix it with butter, salt, and whole pepper. Stuff your fowls with it. Lard them and wrap them in papers buttered or oiled.
Melt some butter rolled in flour, and stir into it the rest of the tarragon. Moisten it with a little water or milk. Stir in the yolks of two beaten eggs, and the juice of half a lemon. Serve it up as gravy. Strew over the fowls some sprigs of fresh tarragon.
A STEWED FOWL.
Take a large fowl, and put it into a stew-pan with two ounces or more of butter, some thin slices of cold ham, a little parsley and onion chopped fine, and some nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Then pour in half a tumbler of white wine. You may add, if you choose, six table-spoonfuls of boiled rice, which you must afterwards serve up under the fowl and ham. Let it stew slowly for two hours, with just sufficient water to keep it from burning.
Before you send it to table, go all over the fowl with a feather or brush dipped in yolk of egg. You may add to the stew a dozen small onions, to be laid round the fowl with the slices of ham.
CHICKENS IN JELLY.
Cold chickens, pigeons, and game, look very handsome in jelly. To make this jelly, take four calves-feet (with the skin on) and boil them to a strong jelly with an ounce of isinglass and three quarts of water, carefully skimming off the fat. The calves-feet must be boiled the day before the jelly is wanted, and when it is cold scrape off all the sediment that adheres to it. Then boil the jelly with the addition of the whites and shells of six eggs, the juice of three lemons, three or four sticks of cinnamon, half a pound of loaf-sugar, and a pint of Malaga or other sweet wine. Let it boil hard for five or six minutes, but do not stir it. Strain it several times through a flannel bag into a deep white pan, but do not on any consideration squeeze or press the bag, as that will entirely spoil the transparency of the jelly. After it has done dripping through the bag, take out all the ingredients (as they are now of no farther use) and wash the bag clean. Then pour the jelly into it again, and let it strain. Repeat this till it is perfectly clear and bright; washing the bag every time. Sometimes (but not often) it will be clear at the first straining.
Put a little of the jelly into the bottom of a deep dish or bowl, and set it in a cold place. When it has congealed and is firm, lay your chickens on it with the breasts downwards. Having kept the remainder of the jelly warm, to prevent its congealing too soon, pour it over the fowls. Let it stand all night or till it is perfectly firm. Then set your dish or bowl in warm water for a moment, to loosen the jelly. Lay over it the dish in which you intend to serve it up, and turn it out carefully. If you fear that you will not be able to turn it out without breaking the jelly, you may prepare it at the beginning in a deep china dish fit to send to table.
If you put too much water to the calves-feet, the jelly will never be firm, till it is boiled over again with more isinglass. The generality of cooks are in the habit of putting too much water to every thing, and should be cautioned accordingly.