A Real Indian Pilaw

Instructions

1. Boil three pounds of bacon in the usual manner and take it out.
2. Drop into the same pan a pair of fowls (2 fowls) compactly trussed as for boiling. In three quarters of an hour, unless very large, they will be sufficiently cooked - but they should be thoroughly boiled.
3. When they are so, lift them out and place a hot cover and thick cloth over them.
4. Take three pints and a half of the liquor in which they were boiled. When it again boils, add nearly two pounds of well washed Patna rice, three onions, and a quarter of an ounce each of cloves and peppercorns with half as much allspice, tied loosely in a bit of muslin.
5. Stew these together very gently for three quarters of an hour. Do not stir them, as it breaks the rice.
6. Take out the spice and onions. Lay in the fowls if necessary to heat them quite through, and dish them neatly with the rice heaped smoothly over them.
7. Garnish with hot hard-boiled eggs cut in quarters, or with fried forcemeat-balls, or with half rings of onion fried extremely dry. The bacon, heated apart, should be served in a separate dish.
8. THE AUTHOR'S OWN CAVEAT, which contradicts the method above: Acton warns that to be really cooked, and so wholesome in this country, a larger quantity of liquid should be added, since one pint (or pound) of rice will absorb three pints of water or broth; and that the three quarters of an hour allowed for stewing appears to her insufficient for the rice to become really tender. Judge the rice by tenderness rather than by the clock.
9. A Persian pilaw is made much in the same manner, sometimes with morsels of fried kid mixed with the rice.