Saturday, August 18, 2012

Butterflied Chickens - Poulets en chauvres-souris

I can understand how one could see these flattened whole chickens as Bats--today we call it butterflied, spatchcock [if the breast bone is removed, not just flattened].

Butterflied Chickens. You have hen chickens which you draw [disembowel] and clean [pluck and singe], the head above the stomach, the legs on the inside, you beat them & break the large [breast] bone, put them in a pan with oil, sweet herbs, season with salt and pepper, lemon section, & you roast them; when they are white [flesh is set and no pink juices exude when pierced with a skewer], being cooked, serve with a sauce of your imagination, or green [without sauce as it comes from the pan with its own juices]. Young partridges, Quails, Pheasants, & the Pigeons are done in the same way.
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Poulets en chauvres-souris. Vous avez des poulets que vous appropriez, vous les troussez en poules, les pates dessus l'estomac, les jambes en dedans, vous les battez & cassez les gros os, les mettez dans une casserolle avec huile, fines herbes, assaisonnez, tranche de citron, & vous les faites griller, qu'ils soient blancs, étant cuits, une sauce à votre fantaisie, ou verte, servez. Les Perdreaux, Cailles, Faisandeaux, & les Pigeons se font de même.
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Le Cuisinier Gascon. A Amsterdam, 1740, p. 64.

3 comments:

A bird in the hand said...

I guess "papillon" doesn't have the same ring to it as chauve-souris :)
A nice, simple recipe. I'm going to try it. Merci!
Colette

Anonymous said...

loving your posts. I was doing 18th c. open hearth cooking while living in Charlotte NC ( Cooking Guild of the Catawba Valley). And now I am living in France, but haven't found an opportunity to do open hearth cooking. Shame, because the ingredients in your recettes are so much more available.

Lise said...

I am a french Canadian and i love cooking. I took several courses (french, italian, japanese, etc.)here(Montréal) or aboard and one french receipe was called "poulet en crapaudine" crapaudine for crapaud or frog with the exact ingredients and look...
Italian from Florence use also a similar receipe.

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