Chickens in Pastry in the Lombard Manner

PERIOD: France, 14th century | SOURCE: Le Menagier de Paris | CLASS: Authentic

DESCRIPTION: Chickens in Pastry

ORIGINAL RECEIPT:

Chickens be set in a pastry on their backs with the breast upward and large slices of bacon on the breast, and then covered. Item in the Lombard manner, when the chickens be plucked and prepared, take beaten eggs (to wit yolks and whites) with verjuice and spice powder and dip your chickens therin; then set them in the pasty with strips of bacon as above.

- Power, Eileen. The Goodman of Paris (Le Menagier de Paris). A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by A Citizen of Paris (c. 1395). New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1928.

MODERN RECIPE:

• 1 three- to four-pound chicken, or two game hens
• Strong pastry dough for four nine-inch pie crusts
• 4-6 strips thick-cut bacon or Canadian bacon
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp wine vinegar
• 1/8 tsp each cinnamon, mace, powdered ginger and cloves

2. Roll out pastry dough into an oblong about half an inch thick, or, if using game hens, two oblongs.

3. In a bowl, lightly beat the egg, and stir in vinegar and spices.

4. Place the chicken or game hens on the pastry and, with a pastry brush, cover the fowl thoroughly with egg mixture. Place the strips of bacon on the breasts.

5. Snugly fold the pastry around the fowl, crimping the seams together with your fingers. Trim off any excess pastry. With a knife cut several openings in the crust, perhaps in an artistic pattern.

6. Put the fowl in a roasting pan, put it in the oven, and bake for thirty minutes per pound for the chicken, at least an hour for the game hens, or until the meat is cooked through.

7. Remove from oven, allow to cool for a while, and remove pastry before serving.

Serves four to six.

Notes on the Recipe:

The purpose of the pastry is to contain the baking chicken; it need not be particularly good pastry, or even edible. I substitute wine vinegar for verjuice.

Chickens in Pastry in the Lombard Manner is featured in A Dinner of Lombardy