Culinary jottings

In roasting Indian poultry, invariably lard the breast with fat bacon, or tie a flap of bacon over it. Birds cannot be kept too moist when roasting. A large sweet onion, and a lump of preserved butter should be put inside the carcass of a fowl, and the basting should be carefully attended to. The slower the roasting the better. I have often found that a fowl baked in a slow oven till about three parts done, and then finished in front of the fire, was excellent. It should be occasionally basted with melted butter whilst in the oven. The bacon tied over the breast should be removed during the last five minutes of the cooking, when the bird should be lightly dredged over with flour, and liberally basted with melted butter to produce the brown, crisp, blisters, which always make a fowl look inviting. If permitted to follow the customs of the cookroom, the uneducated Ramasamy will send up your roast fowl — hardly as large as an English chicken, — with its breast strangely puffed out and distorted with a horrible compound which he calls " stuffing." This you carefully avoid eating on account of its nastiness, but few, I take it, boldly order their cooks never to perpetrate the atrocity 1 08 CULIXA R Y J 0 TTIXGS FOR MA DRA S. again, being under an impression that stuffing is necessary in roasting poultry. Tlie only birds that should be stuffed in the crop are turkeys, and exceptionally fine capons. Who amongst you ever saw a roast fowl in England, stuffed ? The barbarous practice has become common out here, and ought to be put down as utterly wrong. Moisture, which is so necessary in roasting, should, as I have already observed, be secured by either larding the fowl with fat bacon, or tying a slice of -bacon over the breast. I however advocate a stuffing for the inside of a fowl intended for braising as follows : — well mashed potato, and boiled sweet onion, in the proportion of two-thirds of the former to one-third of the latter. The mashed potato, of course, contains butter, spiced pepper, a little milk or cream, or the yolk of an egg, and helps to preserve the juiciness of the bird ; the flavour it imparts too is, I think, agreeable. This with a little chopped sage may be used for ducks. An autlior for whom I entertain the greatest respect urges the practice I have mentioned of putting one sweet onion, and a lump of salt butter, inside every chicken, or fowl, to be roasted. But this cannot be called " stuffing." A turkey, on the other hand, requires carefully made forcemeat, and, as you all know, there are many varieties thereof. Truffles, and chestnuts form the epicurean stuffing of the roast turkey, and one of oysters is propounded for the boiled bird. I leave these elaborate compositions alone, for receipts can be easily hunted up for them when a special occasion may demand a " dindon frufe a la Perigord,'' or a " dinde hraisee a la financiers,'' ^r., ^x. The stuffing, I am anxious to discuss, is the ordinary one we remember in England for turkeys, veal, hares, and so on : — a firm, green-tinted forcemeat, flavoured with pleasant herbs, and a suspicion of lemon-peel ; a forcemeat which cuts clean with the slice of the breast of your turkey, or