FRICASSEED FOWL OR CHICKEN (an Entree)

Ingredients

• 2 small fowls or 1 large one
• 3 oz butter
• a bunch of parsley and green onions
• 1 clove
• 2 blade mace
• 1 shalot
• 1 bay-leaf
• salt and white pepper to taste
• 1/4 pint cream
• the yolks of 3 eggs

Instructions

1. Choose a couple of fat plump chickens, and, after drawing, singeing, and washing them, skin, and carve them into joints; blanch these in boiling water for 2 or 3 minutes;
2. take them out, and immerse them in cold water to render them white.
3. Put the trimmings, with the necks and legs, into a stewpan;
4. add the parsley, onions, clove, mace, shalot, bay-leaf, and a seasoning of pepper and salt;
5. pour to these the water that the chickens were blanched in, and simmer gently for rather more than 1 hour.
6. Have ready another stewpan;
7. put in the joints of fowl, with the above proportion of butter;
8. dredge them with flour, let them get hot, but do not brown them much;
9. then moisten the fricassee with the gravy made from the trimmings, &c., and stew very gently for 1/2 hour.
10. Lift the fowl into another stewpan, skim the sauce, reduce it quickly over the fire, by letting it boil fast, and strain it over them.
11. Add the cream, and a seasoning of pounded mace and cayenne;
12. let it boil up, and when ready to serve, stir to it the well-beaten yolks of 3 eggs: these should not be put in till the last moment, and the sauce should be made _hot_, but must _not boil_, or it will instantly curdle.
13. A few button-mushrooms stewed with the fowl are by many persons considered an improvement.