From:
The Thorough Good Cook
Poultry: 10. Fowl a la Villeroi
Take a fine
fowl, which may be known to
connoisseurs by a skin of bluish hue marbled with
grey. Having been emptied and singed, let it be
trussed, the legs turned down outwards; inside the body introduce a small quantity of
butter kneaded with
salt and
lemon juice. Put the fowl into an
oval stew-pan, with a layer of
fat bacon; next pour some poele over it. Things which are poele, requiring to preserve their whiteness, are not to be kept on the fire so long as others. It requires only three-quarters of an hour for a fowl to be done in this style. A
capon, however, would require fully an hour.
Observation, to be particularly attended to by the cook.-
As a poele has no
translation; I realize the name. It is indispensable in fine cookery, and is made as follows :
Take one pound of
beef suet, one pound of quite fresh
batter, and one pound of very fat
bacon; cut, the suet and the bacon into very large
dice; put them into a stew-pan with two pounds of
veal cut in the same manner;
fry till the veal becomes very white: and then
moisten with about three pints of boiling water, a handful of
salt, one
bay-leaf, a few sprigs of
thyme, one
onion stuck with three
cloves, and a great bunch of
parsley and
green onions; let the whole
boil gently till the onion is done, then drain it through a hair
sieve, and use for anything that may want poele. The use of poele as to make everything boiled in it very white and
tasty. In the
winter it keeps for a week, and is very useful in the
larder.
Obs.-This is almost the same
operation as
braising; the only difference is that what is poele must be
underdone, and a
braise must be done through.