FRENCH CHICKEN CUTLETS (Cold Meat Cookery).
927. INGREDIENTS.—The remains of cold roast or boiled fowl, fried bread, clarified butter, the yolk of 1 egg, bread crumbs, 1/2 teaspoonful of finely-minced lemon-peel; salt, cayenne, and mace to taste. For sauce,—1 oz. of butter, 2 minced shalots, a few slices of carrot, a small bunch of savoury herbs, including parsley, 1 blade of pounded mace, 6 peppercorns, 1/4 pint of gravy.
Mode.—Cut the fowls into as many nice cutlets as possible; take a corresponding number of sippets about the same size, all cut one shape; fry them a pale brown, put them before the fire, then dip the cutlets into clarified butter mixed with the yolk of an egg, cover with bread crumbs seasoned in the above proportion, with lemon-peel, mace, salt, and cayenne; fry them for about 5 minutes, put each piece on one of the sippets, pile them high in the dish, and serve with the following sauce, which should be made ready for the cutlets. Put the butter into a stewpan, add the shalots, carrot, herbs, mace, and peppercorns; fry for 10 minutes or rather longer; pour in 1/2 pint of good gravy, made of the chicken bones, stew gently for 20 minutes, strain it, and serve.
Time.—5 minutes to fry the cutlets; 35 minutes to make the gravy.
Average cost, exclusive of the chicken, 9d.
Seasonable from April to July.
EGGS FOR HATCHING.—Eggs intended for hatching should be removed as soon as laid, and placed in bran in a dry, cool place. Choose those that are near of a size; and, as a rule, avoid those that are equally thick at both ends,—such, probably, contain a double yolk, and will come to no good. Eggs intended for hatching should never be stored longer than a month, as much less the better. Nine eggs may be placed under a Bantam hen, and as many as fifteen under a Dorking. The odd number is considered preferable, as more easily packed. It will be as well to mark the eggs you give the hen to sit on, so that you may know if she lays any more: if she does, you must remove them; for, if hatched at all, they would be too late for the brood. If during incubation an egg should be broken, remove it, and take out the remainder, and cleanse them in luke-warm water, or it is probable the sticky nature of the contents of the broken egg will make the others cling to the hen's feathers; and they, too, may be fractured.
HENS SITTING.—Some hens are very capricious as regards sitting; they will make a great fuss, and keep pining for the nest, and, when they are permitted to take to it, they will sit just long enough to addle the eggs, and then they're off again. The safest way to guard against such annoyance, is to supply the hen with some hard-boiled eggs; if she sits on them a reasonable time, and seems steadily inclined, like a good matron, you may then give her proper eggs, and let her set about the business in earnest.