Chicken

“ Clean and prepare two chickens, cut up in pieces. Cut half a pound of bacon in small pieces, and put on the fire, in a saucepan, for about five minutes; add your chicken, and, when colored on one side, turn over on the other. When done, pour off all the grease in your saucepan, moisten your chicken with half a pint of Spanish sauce (Art. 80) and a claret-glass of white wine. Peel two dozen little onions, put them in a frying-pan with a little lard, and, when colored, add them to your chicken a moment before serving, with a pinch of pepper, salt, nutmeg, and a dozen mushrooms cut in quarters. ”

“ Break all the bones that have been extracted from the chicken, the head and neck included, and put them on the fire with dried meat cut in little pieces, butter, onion, celery and carrot, seasoned with salt and pepper. Make the sauce with the water in which the chicken has been boiled, which has naturally become a good chicken broth. ”

“ If it be soft, easily bent, and if it feels like cartilage, the chicken is young. Sometimes dealers break the bone for the purpose of deceiving buyers, but it does not take a great deal of intelligence to decide between a broken bone and one that is easily bent. If the bone be hard and firm, it is an indication of age. For broiling, of [175] course, the chicken should be young, the flesh of good color and well nourished, and, as in the buying of beef, one may rely upon the judgment of a good dealer. The way in which chickens are fed has much to do with the flavor of the meat. ”

“ Cut the chicken into nice pieces for serving. Roll in flour, or, if preferred, in beaten egg and crumbs. Heat a cupful of nice dripping or lard; add a teaspoonful of salt and a saltspoonful of pepper; lay in the pieces, and fry brown on each side, allowing not less than twenty minutes for the thickest pieces and ten for the thin ones. Lay on a hot platter, and make a gravy by adding one tablespoonful of flour to the fat, stirring smooth, and adding slowly one cupful of boiling water or stock. Strain over the chicken. Milk or cream is often used instead of water. ”

“ When the chicken is stewed tender, seasoned, and the gravy thickened, take it from the fire; take out the largest bones, scrape the meat from the neck and backbone, throw the bones away; line the sides of a four or six quart pudding-dish with a rich baking powder or soda biscuit dough, a quarter of an inch thick; put in part of the chicken, a few lumps of butter, pepper and salt, if needed, some cold boiled eggs cut in slices. ”

“ Never had a leg of lamb or a piece of roast beef gone so far in her domestic experience, a chicken seemed almost to outlive its usefulness in its various forms of reappearance, and the salads he devised were as wonderful as the omelets he superintended, or the gay dances he played on his beloved violin, as soon as he could sit up enough to manage it. ”

“ The chicken is hot and feverish, although trembling violently, and they are extremely tender on being handled, and soon a dark-colored, dry, horny scale will be found at the end of the tongue, and the beak may turn yellow at the base; the appetite fails and the plumage becomes ruffled, and they gradually sink and die. ”

“ Well, so had this admirable chicken, a bird that was grown for the use of the table, produced like a vegetable. A dear bird that was never allowed to run about and weary itself as our helpless English chicken is; it lived to get fat without acquiring any useless knowledge or desire of life ”

“ The chicken is boiled tender in a little salted water. When cold, it is cut into pieces; these pieces are basted with butter, and broiled.
Sauce.—One tea-spoonful of made mustard, two table-spoonfuls of Worcestershire sauce, three table-spoonfuls of vinegar; boil all together, and pour over the chicken. This dish is generally served on the Cunard steamers for supper. Or, boil the chickens, cut them into pieces, pepper and salt them, roll them in flour, sauté them in a little hot lard, and serve cream-sauce, the same as for fried spring chickens. This makes a good winter breakfast. ”

“ One chicken or fowl, weighing about three pounds; one table-spoonful of butter, three of flour, one large onion, three slices of carrot, three of turnip, three pints of boiling water and salt and pepper. Cut the chicken in slices suitable for serving. Wash, and put in a deep stew-pan, add the water, and set on to boil. Put the carrot, turnip and onion, cut fine, in a sauce-pan, with the butter, and cook slowly half an hour, stirring often; then take up the vegetables in a strainer, place the strainer in the stew-pan with the chicken, and dip some of the water into it. ”

“ Fried Chicken: Cut into joints two tender young chickens, wipe the pieces dry, season with salt and pepper, red and black, then set on ice. Fry a pound of streaky bacon in a deep skillet, take out when crisp, roll chicken in flour, dip in beaten egg, then roll again, and lay in the fat, which must be bubbling hot, but not scorching. Cook, turning often, to a rich brown, take out, then pile in a pan, set the pan over another with boiling water in the bottom, [170] and put all in a very hot oven for fifteen minutes. This cooks the chicken through and through without making it hard. ”

“ Roast Chicken.—Procure a nice plump chicken, which draw and truss, and cut the sinews; pass the spit through under the skewer as usual, and set it down before a clear fire; after being there five minutes, have ready a pat of butter, in the bowl of a wooden spoon, with which rub the chicken all over; if the fire is too fierce, put it back a short distance, that it may roast of a yellowish-brown color; when a light smoke arises from the chicken, which will be in about twenty minutes from the time it was put down, it is done ”

“ Put it in a saucepan with a sliced onion and carrot, six parsley-roots, two cloves, a clove of garlic, two pepper-corns, a branch of thyme, a bay-leaf, a pinch of salt, and enough consommé (stock, Art. 1) to cover three quarters of your chicken. When beginning to boil, send it to the oven for about an hour with all its liquid, with which baste it from time to time. Serve with a purée of artichokes (Art. 443) , purée of celery (Art. 392 ) , purée of French chestnuts (Art. 442) , sauce Allemande (Art. 81) , or other sauces preferred. You may also serve the chicken with a clear gravy. ”

“ Then stew or fry some sweetbreads of veal and forced chickens between two dishes, or Lamb-stones, fried with some mace, marrow, and grapes, sparagus, or artichocks, and skirrets, the manchets being well boil’d, and your chickens finely stewed, serve them in a fine dish, the manchets in the middle, and the sweetbreads, chickens, and carved sippets round about the dish; being finely dished, thicken the chicken broth with strained almonds, creams, sugar, and beaten butter.
Garnish your dish with marrow, pistaches, artichocks, puff paste, mace, dates, pomegranats, or barberries, and slic’t lemon. ”

“ For an extra, legs of large chickens may be boned and filled like the chicken, the rest being used for a fricassee.
Broiled.—Young, or what are called spring chickens, are broiled; an old one would not be as good.
To broil, a chicken is split in two lengthwise, or the back only is split, so as to open it. Salt both sides and butter them slightly, then broil on a good but not sharp fire. Serve with a maître-d'hôtel, piquante, or ravigote sauce. ”

“ But travellers must not be too particular, and so long as your food is wholesome, eat and be thankful. But here comes my dinner, with the chepatties I have just seen prepared, and which sight suggested the foregoing lines. Chicken for breakfast, chicken for dinner, chicken yesterday, chicken to-morrow, toujours chicken, sometimes curried, sometimes roasted, torn asunder and made into soup, stew or cutlets, or with extended wing forming the elegant spatchcock, it is still chicken; the greatest and rarest change being that it is occasionally rather tender. ”

“ In less than thirty minutes from the time we stop, horses are unharnessed, fire built, prairie chicken dressed and cooked, coffee made, table spread, blessing asked and we busy with the tender and juicy chicken. ”

“ Chicken à la Cœlienne.—Cook a chicken with garum, oil, wine, coriander seed, and onion. Then put some milk and a little salt into another saucepan, with honey and a little water, and cook this mixture over a very slow fire. Throw in by degrees some raspings of sweet biscuits, and take care to stir continually. Put the chicken into this sauce, and then serve with a seasoning of pepper, alisander, and wild{158} marjoram, mixed with honey and cooked vine, which must be boiled and thickened with fine flour. ”

“ The young chicken, a short time after it leaves the egg, knows how to take care of itself nearly as well as the young mound-bird. It can run after its mother, use its eyes, pick up food, and answer the call of the old hen ”

“ Spread the boned chicken on a board, lay a roll of forcemeat on it, draw it together, giving it the shape of the chicken, and sew the skin together. Put the legs and wings into the positions of a trussed fowl, roll it in a piece of cheesecloth, and secure the ends well. (See Boning and Braising, pages 181-182, “Century Cook Book.”) ”

“ Procure four very young spring chickens, not trussed, cut off the feet below the joints, break the bone in each leg, then cut an incision in the thigh of the chicken and turn the legs into it, cut the chickens open down the back-bone, and beat them flat, fry five minutes in butter in a sauté-pan, season with a little pepper and salt, egg and bread-crumb them all over, lay them on a gridiron over a moderate fire, and broil a nice light-brown colour ”

“ It was a chicken! a most beautiful yellow chicken, with bright black eyes and a little sharp beak, and,—oh! what was this? Why! why! the chicken’s head came off, and the chicken’s body was all full of sugar-plums!
“Oh! oh! oh!” cried little Hal. “Mammy! Mammy! come and look at dis chicken! He can spit his head out!” ”

“ In an article entitled “Changes Taking Place in Chickens in Cold Storage,” in the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, for 1907, we read that the fresh chicken is a pale, soft yellow, without any tinge or suggestion of green in the colour of the skin, while there is enough translucency to show through it the delicate pink of the muscles underneath. It can be plainly seen that the pink tint is not of the skin itself. ”

“ In a young chicken, it will be smooth and unmarred; in an old one, it will be rough and probably darker in color. If the feet have been left on, they too will serve to indicate the age. The feet of a young chicken are smooth and soft; whereas, those of an old bird are rough, hard, and scaly. The claws of a young one are short and sharp; but as the bird grows older they grow stronger and become blunt and marred with use. The spur, which is a projection just above the foot on the back of each leg, is small in the young chicken, and increases in size as the age increases. ”

“ About the twenty-first day, the chicken is excluded from the egg; for the purpose of breaking the shell of which it is furnished with a horny-pointed scale, greatly harder than the bill itself, at the upper tip of the bill—a scale which falls off, or becomes absorbed, after the chicken is two or three days old. ”

“ DRAWING A CHICKEN.--By drawing a chicken is meant the taking out of the entrails and removing all parts that are not edible. Although this work will be done by some butchers, the better plan is to do it at home, for, as has been stated, chicken or any other poultry must be cooked very soon after the entrails are removed. Chicken that is to be roasted is always prepared in this way, as the cavity that remains may be filled with stuffing. Drawing is also necessary when chicken is to be cooked in any other way, as by stewing or frying, but in addition it must be cut up. ”

“ There are also various entrées of fowl and chicken, such as poulets à la reine, à la regence, à la Montmorency, à l’ivoire; and various fricassées, as, à la chevalière, à la Saint Lambert, à la financière, à la Bourguinonne, à la Villeroi, and tutti quanti; but it is necessary to say, that to produce these entrées, or the filets de poulet à la royale, or cotellettes de cuisses de [181] poulets à la perigueux, or à suprême de volaille, one must have an accomplished cook.
The sooner we multiply schools of cookery for entrées and entremets, the better. ”

“ Roast Chicken Dress, clean, stuff, and truss a chicken. Place on its back on rack in a dripping-pan, rub entire surface with salt, and spread breast and legs with three tablespoons butter, rubbed until creamy and mixed with two tablespoons flour. Dredge bottom of pan with flour. ”

“ Insert the hand and remove all the entrails. The skin must be loosened at the neck and the crop removed. In any case, wash the chicken thoroughly inside and out, even holding the cavity under running water. If there is hair remaining on the chicken, singe this off over burning paper or over a gas flame.
The composition is essentially the same as that of meat. The white of chicken, fowls, and turkeys is thought to be more digestible than the dark meat.
GENERAL METHODS AND RECIPES
The principles of cookery are the same as with the meat. ”

“ SWEDISH DUCK FILLING.—One quart of bread crumbs, four good-sized apples, one half cup of browned butter, cinnamon, raisins, and currants to taste. Stuff fowl.—Contributed.
DAIRY LUNCH CHICKEN SANDWICH.—Make a thin batter of one and one half pints of water, one pint of milk, one egg, scant half teaspoon of soda, one tablespoon of salt, dash of pepper and flour enough to mix like pan cake batter. Cut a young chicken into quarters, dip it in the batter and fry brown in deep fat. ”