POULTRY.
Poultry should never be eaten in less than six or eight hours after it is killed; but it should be picked and drawn as soon as possible. There is no direr disgrace to our Northern markets than the practice of sending whole dead fowls to market. I have bought such from responsible poultry dealers, and found them uneatable, from having remained undrawn until the flavor of the craw and intestines had impregnated the whole body. Those who are conversant with the habit of careful country housewives, of keeping up a fowl without food for a day and night before killing and dressing for their own eating, cannot but regard with disgust the surcharged crops and puffy sides of those sold by weight in the shambles. If you want to know what you really pay for poultry bought in these circumstances, weigh the offal extracted from the fowl by your cook, and deduct from the market weight. “But don’t you know it actually poisons a fowl to lie so long undressed?” once exclaimed a Southern lady to me. “In our markets they are offered for sale ready picked and drawn, with the giblets—also cleaned—tucked under their wings.”
I know nothing about the poisonous nature of the entrails and crops. I do assert that the custom is unclean and unjust. And this I do without the remotest hope of arousing my fellow-housekeepers to remonstrance against established usage. Only it relieves my mind somewhat to grumble at what I cannot help. The best remedy I can propose for the grievance is to buy live fowls, and, before sending them home, ask your butcher to decapitate them; the probabilities being greatly in favor of the supposition that your cook is too “tinder-hearted” to attempt the job.
One word as to the manner of roasting meats and fowls. In this day of ranges and cooking-stoves, I think I am speaking within bounds when I assume that not one housekeeper in fifty uses a spit, or even a tin kitchen, for such purposes. It is in vain that the writers of receipt-books inform us with refreshing naïveté that all our meats are baked, not roasted, and expatiate upon the superior flavor of those prepared upon the English spits and in old fashioned kitchens, where enormous wood-fires blazed from morning until night. I shall not soon forget my perplexity when, an inexperienced housekeeper and a firm believer in all “that was writ” by older and wiser people, I stood before my neat Mott’s “Defiance,” a fine sirloin of beef ready to be cooked on the table behind me, and read from my Instruction-book that my “fire should extend at least eight inches beyond the roaster on either side!” I am not denying the virtues of spits and tin kitchens—only regretting that they are not within the reach of every one. In view of this fact, let me remark, for the benefit of the unfortunate many, that, in the opinion of excellent judges, the practice of roasting meat in close ovens has advantages. Of these I need mention but two, to wit, the preservation of the flavor of the article roasted, and the prevention of its escape to the upper regions of the dwelling.