Poëlings

Poêlé de volaille (poultry pot-roasted in butter) teaches one rule above all: the bird cooks without a drop of stock or water. Butter carries the savour between the chicken and its bed of Matignon (No. 227), while the covered pot keeps the flesh tender. Add liquid during cooking and you have begun a braise. Pleasant, certainly, but it is no longer poêlé. The word carries the technique.

The classical kitchen assumed a large bird, a saucier on staff, Brown Veal Stock (No. 9) never off the fire, another pair of hands for basting, and a salamander waiting to give the skin its final colour. For four people, one chicken and a snug modern cocotte do the work. A short finish in a hot oven replaces the salamander, while a fine sieve replaces the serviette. The wrapping of pork fat and buttered paper used for very large joints was brigade scaffolding, so it can go. The covered butter cooking, the absence of liquid, and the ten-minute extraction of the matignon into the stock must stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The finished bird should be deeply bronzed, moist at the joint, and accompanied by a clear amber sauce tasting of chicken, butter, and aromatic vegetables. We don't apologize for butter. Watch the matignon as closely as the chicken: if it darkens too quickly, lower the heat and add butter, never stock. That dry, butter-rich cooking is the step that decides the dish.