Ideally, your hen and its eggs should be roasted on a spit, which was a staple of every Medieval kitchen hearth. Sadly, unless one is lucky enough to have a home rotisserie, roasting in an oven will have to suffice for the modern cook. Spit-roasting gives the eggs a wonderfully 3-dimensional effect, but roasting in an oven produces an egg which is flat on one side.
During roasting, some of the stuffing may pour out of the chicken from the back opening onto the baking sheet. This unattractive lump should be removed before placing the hen on the serving platter, for appearance's sake.
Anmerkungen in eigener Sache: Man kann die Färbung natürlich auch mit natürlichen, authentischen Mitteln erreichen, grün mit ausgepreßtem Petersil, gold mit Safran, rot mit Sandelholz. Was mich an dem Bild etwas stört, ist der grüne Untergrund; ich hätte eher roten Salat genommen, oder aber das Huhn rot und gold gefärbt. Ich könnte mir auch vorstellen, eine Art Drachenhuhn oder Basilisken zu machen, wenn man kein Huhn mit Kopf und Füßen bekommt; dann einen Drachen- oder Basiliskenkopf und die Füße aus zB Brotteig formen... Muß ich mal ausprobieren, Bericht folgt. - Lómion
Stuffed Poultry. Take your hens, cut their necks, scald and pluck them, and be careful that the skin remains undamaged and whole, and do not plump the birds; then take some sort of straw and push it between the skin and the flesh, and blow; then cut the skin between the shoulders, not making too large a hole, and leave the legs with the feet, wings, and neck with the head still attached to the skin.
To make the stuffing, take mutton, veal, pork and the cooked dark meat of chickens, and chop up all of this raw, and grind it in a mortar, together with a great quantity of raw eggs, cooked chestnuts, a good rich cheese, good spice powder and a little saffron, and salt to taste. Then stuff your chickens and sew up the hole again. With any leftover stuffing make hard balls, using a great deal of saffron, the size of packets of woad, and cook them in beef broth and boiling water gently, so they do not fall apart. Then mount your chickens and the balls on very slender iron spits.
To glaze them or cover them with green or yellow: for the yellow, take a great quantity of egg yolks, beat them well with a little saffron, and set this glazing in a dish of some sort; and should you want a green glazing, grind the greenery with the eggs without saffron, and put this through the strainer and apply it; after your poultry and your balls of stuffing are cooked, place your spit in the dish with the glazing mixture two or three times and cast your glazing the full length of the spit, then put it back on the fire so that your glazing will take; and watch that your glazing does not have so hot a fire that it burns.
Viandier de Taillevent, 1375, A Boke of Gode Cookery