This section is from the book "Hand-Book Of Practical Cookery", by Pierre Blot. Also available from Amazon: Hand-Book of Practical Cookery, for Ladies and Professional Cooks.
Clean, prepare, and truss the bird as directed for poultry, then cook it whole as a stewed chicken above. When done, dish the chicken, place peas a l'Anglaise all around, strain the sauce over the whole, and serve.
Clean, prepare, and truss a fat chicken. Make about two dozen small pegs, with truffles, about half an inch long and one-eighth of an inch in diameter. Take a skewer, make a hole in the flesh of the breast of the chicken, and put a truffle-peg into it. Put a dozen pegs in the same way on each side of the breast-bone, and cook and serve the chicken. It is either boiled, stewed, or roasted, and served as directed for either.
Proceed as for a stewed chicken, with the exception that it is cooked whole after being trussed as directed for poultry, and after having stuffed it with two ounces of butter kneaded with half a dozen stalks of tarragon chopped fine. Serve with a few stalks of tarragon around the dish.
Clean, prepare, and truss the chicken as directed. Place it on the spit slightly salted and buttered all around, or envelop it in buttered paper, or merely cover the breast with thin slices of salt pork tied with wine. Baste often, at first with melted butter, and then with the drippings. 11*
If the bird Las been enveloped with paper, the latter must be removed about ten minutes before taking the chicken from the fire; do the same with the slices of salt pork.
It takes from twenty-five minutes to one hour to roast a chicken, with a good fire. The time depends as much on the quality of the bird as on the size. With a skewer or a small knife, or merely by pressing on it with the fingers, any one can learn how to tell when done, after having roasted only two or three. Even by the look of it, many persons can tell.
Dish the chicken when roasted, put fresh water-cress all around, remove the fat from the gravy, which you turn over the whole ; add salt and pepper to taste, a little vinegar or lemon-juice, and serve warm.
When roasted, serve with the following sauces: soubise, tarragon, oyster, tomato, and Provengale.
Dish the bird when roasted as directed, and place one of the following garnitures around, and serve warm: quenelles of chicken or of veal, Mace-doine, and cauliflowers.
Spread four ounces of macaroni au jus on a dish, place the roasted chicken on it, and serve the whole warm.
It may be served with its gravy and craw-fish or lobster-butter.
When dished, surround the chicken with chestnuts glazed, and serve.
Dish the bird, place four roasted pigeons around, one at each end and one on each side; fill the intervals with green peas au jus, and serve warm.
All the above may be decorated with skewers. Run the skewer in a chestnut and then in a craw-fish; or, in a quenelle and then in a chestnut or craw-fish; or, in a chicken-comb, and in a quenelle, and stick it on the chicken. Two skewers only for a chicken make a fine decora-tion. Slices of truffles, of mushrooms, and chicken-combs, make fine as well as delicious decorations.
 
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