Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Fowls

Whole fowls or young chickens simmered gently in water and served with a white or parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Boiled Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowls

  1. Select white-legged poultry for boiling.

  2. Truss the fowls firmly and neatly, with the legs drawn into the bodies and the wings twisted over the backs.

Boil

  1. Cover the fowls well with water that is hot but not boiling when they are put in.

  2. Add rather less than half a gallon of cold water to an equal quantity of boiling water to bring it to the proper heat for the fowls.

  3. Simmer a full-sized fowl for about three quarters of an hour from the time it begins to simmer; simmer young chickens for twenty to twenty-five minutes.

  4. Boil very gently.

  5. Remove the scum with great care as it gathers on the surface of the water.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Simmer the livers for four or five minutes, press them to a smooth paste with a wooden spoon, and mix very gradually into the sauce, which should not boil after they are added.

  2. Serve with one of the following sauces: parsley and butter, béchamel, English white sauce, oyster, celery, or white-mushroom sauce.

  3. If desired, dish the fowls with small tufts of delicately boiled cauliflower or young vegetable marrow placed round them, and serve white sauce with either.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Poultry (in the method)
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and moist when gently simmered.
Water
Carries heat evenly around the fowls and cooks the meat without browning it.
Livers (in the method)
Melted into the sauce, they add richness and a smooth, savoury body.

The step that matters

Keeping the water at a gentle simmer. Boiling hard toughens the meat fibres and breaks the skin, while a gentle simmer cooks the fowl evenly and keeps it tender. Adding the cold water to bring the bath to the right heat also matters, because water that is too hot at the start can toughen the outer layer before the centre is cooked.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes