Put a poached fowl in the poor man's pot

• "I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday": attributed to King Henry IV of France

• poached:
  • cooked in a small amount of liquid that is kept just below boiling
  • hunted or acquired illegally

• "Just as the French King's ambition was to place a fowl in every man's pot, so does Lenin hope to place an electric lamp on every man's table": Irish Times, 30 December 1922 → pre-electric