and skim well. Add the sliced vegetables, bouquet-garni, peppercorns and salt if necessary, and cook very gently until the fowl is tender. A young fowl should be ready to serve at the end of 1 hour, but an old bird may need twice that length of time. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a stewpan, add the flour, cook for a few minutes without browning, pour in the stock (use some of the liquor in which the fowl was cooked if none other is at hand), and boil up, stirring all the time. Season to taste, and simmer for 10 minutes, or until the fowl is ready. Remove the trussing string, place on a hot dish, pour over the sauce, which must be thick enough to coat it, garnish with chopped truffle, parsley, or hard-boiled yolk of egg, and serve.
Time.—From 1 to 2 hours, according to age. Average Cost, 3s. 3d. to 4s. 6d. Sufficient for 4 or 5 persons.
The Speckled or Spangled Hamburg.—There are two varieties of this fowl—a favourite with many fanciers—the "golden speckled" and the "silver speckled." The general colour of the former is golden or orange-yellow, each feather having a glossy dark brown or black tip, particularly on the hackles of the cock, the wing-coverts, and on the darker feathers of the breast. The female is yellow or orange-brown, the feathers are margined with black. The ground colour of the "silver speckled" bird is silver-white, with a tinge of straw-yellow, each feather being edged with a glossy black half-moon shaped mark. Both these varieties are very handsome, and the hens are good layers.
1221.—FOWL, BOILED WITH OYSTERS. (Fr.—Poulet aux Huîtres.)
Ingredients.—1 fowl, 3 dozen oysters, ¾ of a pint of Béchamel sauce (see Sauces, No. 178) ½ a gill of cream, 1 oz. of butter, the yolks of 2 eggs, 1 blade of mace, salt and pepper.
Method.—Beard the oysters, place 2 dozen of them inside the fowl, and truss for boiling. Put the fowl with the mace and butter into an earthenware fireproof stew-jar with a close-fitting lid. Place the stew-jar in a baking-tin, surround with boiling water, and cook on the stove or in a moderate oven for 2½ hours, or until the fowl is perfectly tender. Blanch the remaining oysters in their liquor, strain the liquor, pour it over the oysters, and put both aside until required. When the fowl is sufficiently cooked, transfer it to a hot dish, strain the liquor and add it to the Béchamel sauce, and, when boiling, stir in the cream and yolks of eggs, previously blended. Continue the stirring and cooking until the sauce thickens, but it must not boil, or the eggs may curdle. Season to taste, pour a little of the sauce over the fowl, add the oysters and their liquor to the remainder, and serve it in a sauce-boat.
Time.—About 3 hours. Average Cost, 7s. 6d. Sufficient for 4 or 6 persons, according to size.
