FOWL PILLAU, based on M. Soyer's Recipe (an Indian Dish)

Ingredients

• 1 lb rice
• 2 oz butter
• a fowl
• 2 quart stock or good broth
• 40 cardamum-seeds
• 1/2 oz coriander-seed
• 1/4 oz cloves
• 1/4 oz allspice
• 1/4 oz mace
• 1/4 oz cinnamon
• 1/2 oz peppercorns
• 4 onions
• 6 thin slices of bacon
• 2 hard-boiled eggs

Instructions

1. Well wash 1 lb. of the best Patna rice, put it into a frying-pan with the butter, which keep moving over a slow fire until the rice is lightly browned.
2. Truss the fowl as for boiling, put it into a stewpan with the stock or broth;
3. pound the spices and seeds thoroughly in a mortar, tie them in a piece of muslin, and put them in with the fowl.
4. Let it boil slowly until it is nearly done;
5. then add the rice, which should stew until quite tender and almost dry;
6. cut the onions into slices, sprinkle them with flour, and fry, without breaking them, of a nice brown colour.
7. Have ready the slices of bacon curled and grilled, and the eggs boiled hard.
8. Lay the fowl in the form of a pyramid upon a dish, smother with the rice, garnish with the bacon, fried onions, and the hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters, and serve very hot.
9. Before taking the rice out, remove the spices.