cayenne to taste, 4 minced shalots, yolk of egg; to every teacupful of
bread crumbs allow 1 blade of pounded mace, 5 teaspoonful of minced
lemon-peel, 1 saltspoonful of salt, a few grains of cayenne.
_Mode_.--Steep the pieces of fowl as in the preceding recipe, then dip
them into the yolk of an egg or clarified butter; sprinkle over bread
crumbs with which have been mixed salt, mace, cayenne, and lemon-peel in
the above proportion. Fry a light brown, and serve with or without
gravy, as may be preferred.
_Time_.--10 minutes to fry the fowl.
_Average cost_, exclusive of the cold fowl, 6d.
_Seasonable_ at any time.
VARIOUS MODES OF FATTENING FOWLS.--It would, I think, be a
difficult matter to find, among the entire fraternity of
fowl-keepers, a dozen whose mode of fattening "stock" is the
same. Some say that the grand f secret is to give them abundance
of saccharine food; others say nothing beats heavy corn steeped
in milk; while another breeder, celebrated in his day, and the
recipient of a gold medal from a learned society, says, "The
best method is as follows:-The chickens are to be taken from the
hen the night after they are hatched, and fed with eggs
hard-boiled, chopped, and mixed with crumbs of bread, as larks
and other small birds are fed, for the first fortnight; after
which give them oatmeal and treacle mixed so as to crumble, of
which the chickens are very fond, and thrive so fast that, at
the end of two months, they will be as large as full-grown
fowls." Others there are who insist that nothing beats
oleaginous diet, and cram their birds with ground oats and suet.
But, whatever the course of diet favoured, on one point they
seem agreed; and that is, that, while fattening, the fowls
_should be kept in the dark_. Supposing the reader to be a
dealer--a breeder of gross chicken meat for the market (against
which supposition the chances are 10,000 to 1), and beset with
as few scruples as generally trouble the huckster, the advice is
valuable. "Laugh and grow fat" is a good maxim enough; but
"Sleep and grow fat" is, as is well known to folks of porcine
attributes, a better. The poor birds, immured in their dark
dungeons, ignorant that there is life and sunshine abroad, tuck
their heads under their wings and make a long night of it; while
their digestive organs, having no harder work than to pile up
fat, have an easy time enough. But, unless we are mistaken, he
who breeds poultry for his own eating, bargains for a more
substantial reward than the questionable pleasure of burying his
carving-knife in chicken grease. Tender, delicate, and
nutritious flesh is the great aim; and these qualities, I can
affirm without fear of contradiction, were never attained by a
dungeon-fatted chicken: perpetual gloom and darkness is as
incompatible with chicken life as it is with human. If you wish
to be convinced of the absurdity of endeavouring to thwart
nature's laws, plant a tuft of grass, or a cabbage-plant, in the
darkest corner of your coal-cellar. The plant or the tuft may
increase in length and breadth, but its colour will be as wan
and pale, almost, as would be your own face under the
circumstances.
POULET A LA MARENGO.