CHICKENS
Roast chickens
Singe to get rid of down, draw and wash well, rinsing the cavity of each fowl with soda and water. Wipe and fill bodies and craws with a stuffing of dry crumbs, well-seasoned with pepper, salt and butter. Tie up the neck and bind legs and wings close to the body with soft cord or tapes.
Lay upon the grating of your covered roaster; dash a cupful of boiling water over them, cover, and roast fifteen minutes to the pound. Drain off the gravy, and set in iced water to throw up the fat. Wash the chickens over with butter, dredge with flour and brown. Clip the threads and dish. Thicken the gravy with browned flour, add the chopped giblets (previously boiled tender), boil up once and turn into a boat.
Boiled fowls
Prepare as for roasting; sew up in white netting, or in coarse lace, and souse four times in boiling water. Then put over the fire in cold, slightly salted water, covering deeply; bring slowly to the boil, and cook gently fifteen minutes to the pound.
Have ready egg-or oyster-sauce, or bread-sauce. Pour a few spoonfuls of hot butter, salted and peppered, over the chickens, the rest into a boat.
Smothered chickens
Broilers, and other really young fowls, are necessary for this dish. Split down the back when you have cleaned and washed them. Lay them out flat on the grating of your roaster, skin side down, and put into a very hot oven, covered. Have ready half a cupful of melted butter, and after five minutes baste the chickens well with this. Turn them as soon as the inside has colored slightly; baste again with butter; when nearly done dredge thickly with flour and wash again with butter. When they are brown, and the flesh is tender in the joints, they are done. Thirty minutes should be sufficient. Baste frequently, and as soon as they are browned you may add a little hot water to the butter.
Take up the chickens and keep them hot, thicken the gravy with browned flour, and boil one minute before pouring into a boat.
If the chickens are large, make a gash at each joint before cooking, and cook longer. This is sometimes called “baked broiled chicken,” sometimes, “chicken broiled in the oven.”
Broiled chicken
When you have cleaned and washed the young chickens, split down the back, so as to leave the breast in one piece. Lay in lemon juice and salad oil for half an hour, wipe lightly, pepper and salt, and lay within a well-greased broiler, skin side uppermost. Broil ten or twelve minutes to the pound, according to age and weight, turning often and never allowing it to drip upon the coals. When done, lay, breast upward, upon a hot dish, rub all over with a mixture of butter, lemon juice and minced parsley, and serve.
Pass fried potatoes with it.
Baked fried chicken
Here again you must have young chickens. Clean, wash and cut up at every joint, dividing the breast into two pieces. Lay in a marinade of salad oil and lemon juice for half an hour; drain, but do not wipe. Roll in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs. Repeat the process and leave on the ice for an hour. Lay, then, upon the grating of your roaster, pour a little gravy in the pan beneath, and cover closely. At the end of twenty minutes, baste with melted butter, carefully, not to disturb the crumb coating; re-cover, and at the end of half an hour more, baste plentifully with the gravy. Now let them brown. Send bread-sauce in with them, and garnish with parsley.
Braised chicken
Cover the grating of your roaster with a blanket of vegetables; a carrot, a small young turnip, an onion, a young carrot, a stalk of celery, all cut up small; a little chopped parsley, and two tablespoonfuls of finely minced salt pork. Have ready the chicken, cleaned and trussed, but not stuffed. Lay, breast upward, on the vegetables and pork. Pour a little boiling water over him from the teakettle, and set, covered, in the oven. Cover closely and cook at least twenty minutes to the pound if the chicken be young. If old, extend the time. At the end of one hour lift the cover and baste with butter, then with the water from the pan, and shut up for an hour longer. Uncover then, rub with butter, dredge with flour and brown.
Drain the gravy with the vegetables from the pan, rub through a colander into a saucepan, thicken with browned flour, boil up and serve in a boat.
Baked chicken
Clean as usual, and cover with thin slices of cold boiled ham. Corned ham is better than smoked, but either will do. Wind fine cotton cord around and around the ham to hold it in place; lay upon the grating of your roaster; pour over it a cup of boiling hot stock, scatter parsley and sprinkle onion juice upon it; cover closely to keep in the steam and cook slowly twenty-five minutes to the pound. Baste three times within the first hour. Test with a skewer or a fork. If tender, it should be unwrapped, basted with butter, dredged with flour and left uncovered to brown.
Garnish with the ham cut into strips. Thicken the gravy with browned flour, season and cook one minute.
Fricasseed chicken
Clean as usual, and dissect so thoroughly that the carver will have nothing for his knife to do in “helping” the dish. The breast and the back should be in two pieces, each, and every joint be separate from the next.
Wash, but do not wipe. Arrange the pieces, dripping wet, in a pot, scatter over each layer minced onion, parsley and chopped fat pork; season with salt and pepper. Cover the pot very closely and set it where it will not begin to boil under an hour. Increase the heat somewhat, but cook slowly throughout. Cook until done! The toughest tendons will yield to slow stewing in time.
When assured that your end is gained, take out the meat with a split spoon, heap upon a platter, the white at one end, the dark at the other, and keep hot while making the gravy. To do this, pour into a bowl, set in iced water to make the fat rise. Skim, return to the pot and add a cupful of hot milk thickened with a tablespoonful of butter rubbed into one of flour. Boil one minute—when you have added a pinch of soda. Have ready two well beaten eggs, add the boiling gravy gradually and pour over the chicken.
This is an old family recipe and warranted excellent.
Pass boiled rice with this dish.
A brown fricassee
Prepare as for ordinary fricassee. Fry half a pound of fat salt pork, sliced thin, in a pan; when they hiss and smoke, put in a large sliced onion and cook until it colors. Now dredge the pieces of chicken with flour and fry, a few pieces at a time, in the same fat, turning several times. When they begin to brown turn all into a pot with the shreds of pork and onion. Add a very small cupful of stock; cover closely and cook until done.
Have ready a brown roux, made by cooking together a great spoonful of butter with the same of browned flour. Stir in a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, and add to the gravy left in the pot after the chicken is dished. Cook two minutes and pour over the dished chicken. Set in the oven for three minutes before serving.
A pilau of chicken
Joint a tender broiler and leave for half an hour in a bath of salad oil and lemon juice. Drain, without wiping. Have ready three tablespoonfuls of butter, hissing hot, in a frying-pan. Fry a sliced onion in it, and then put in the chicken. Cook for ten minutes, turning often, and empty the contents of the pan into a pot with a broad bottom. Pour upon them a cupful of strained tomato sauce, and the same of weak stock—chicken or veal. Stew gently until the chicken is tender; take it up and keep in a hot colander set in the oven and covered closely. Drain off every drop of gravy, return to the fire and add three-quarters of a cupful of rice which has soaked for an hour in cold water. Cook fast until the rice is soft but not broken. Put the chicken back into the pot, mixing well with the rice, simmer three minutes and heap upon a heated platter. Sift Parmesan cheese thickly over all.
Boiled chicken stuffed with oysters
Prepare as usual for boiling or roasting, then fill body and craw with small oysters, which have been dipped in peppered and salted melted butter. Sew up in netting and boil twenty minutes to the pound if young, thirty minutes if old. Unwrap, wash over with butter and lemon juice; pour a few spoonfuls of oyster sauce upon them, the rest into a boat.
Chicken en casserole
Truss the chicken, which must be young and plump, as for roasting. Into a frying-pan on top of the range put two tablespoonfuls of butter, a sliced onion and carrot, a bay leaf and a sprig of thyme. When the vegetables are slightly browned put, with the chicken, into the casserole, add a pint of well-seasoned stock, cover the casserole and cook in the oven for three-quarters of an hour. After it has been in the oven for this length of time, drop in a dozen potato balls, or strips that have been cut from raw potatoes and sauté in hot butter, and a dozen French mushrooms. Season the gravy to taste, and leave the casserole uncovered that the chicken may brown. Ten minutes before taking from the oven, pour over the chicken two tablespoonfuls of sherry. When you take the chicken from the oven sprinkle it with minced parsley. Serve in the casserole.
Creamed stewed chicken
Cut up a fowl as for fricassee, and put over the fire in enough cold water to cover it well. Bring gradually to a gentle boil. When it begins to bubble, add a stalk of celery, some chopped parsley and two tablespoonfuls of minced onion, with a bay leaf. Simmer until tender before seasoning with salt and pepper.
Make a white roux in a frying-pan of two tablespoonfuls of butter cooked with the same quantity of flour. As soon as they are well mixed, stir into them, a teaspoonful at a time, a large cupful of strained and skimmed gravy from the pot. Have ready half a cup of cream, heated, with a pinch of soda. Add this to the thickened gravy also, very slowly, not to curdle the cream. Do not boil after the cream goes in. Arrange the chicken upon a broad platter; pour the creamed gravy over it, and garnish with dumplings cooked in the gravy left in the large pot, after the reserved cupful and the chicken are taken out.
Dumplings for chicken stew
Into a pint of flour sift a heaping teaspoonful of baking-powder, and a quarter-teaspoonful of salt, and sift the flour twice. Now rub in a tablespoonful of shortening and wet with enough milk to make a dough that can be rolled out. Roll and cut into rounds, and drop these into the boiling gravy. They should be done in ten minutes.
Mexican hot tamales (No. 1)
Boil a fowl until tender; salt while boiling. Chop very fine and season with plenty of cayenne pepper and a little garlic. Have ready a thick paste made of one cupful of corn-meal mixed with a little boiling water. Shape the meat into rolls the size of the little finger, and encase each in the corn-meal paste. Take the inner husks of Indian corn, cut off the ends, leaving the husks about six inches long, and wash them in boiling water.
Wrap each tamale in a corn husk; throw two or three Mexican peppers into the liquor in which the chicken was boiled, and cook the tamales in it for fifteen minutes.
Mexican hot tamales (No. 2)
Boil a fowl until tender; strip the meat from the bones and chop fine. Mince half a pound of seeded raisins, and a half-cupful of stoned olives, with one young red pepper chopped “exceeding fine.” Mix all well together, and stir to a paste with two cupfuls of Indian meal; wet with scalding water, season with salt, onion juice and a teaspoonful of sugar. Add more boiling water until you can stir over the fire for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then add six hard-boiled eggs minced fine; meantime lay smooth the soft inner husks of green corn, and tear some into strips for tying; lay upon two of the husks as much of the paste mixture as they will contain, wrap them about it and tie each roll with the stripped husk; drop these rolls into boiling salted water, and boil them for one hour.
If well seasoned, these are very savory.
Chop suey
(A Chinese recipe)
One-half chicken (or quarter chicken and as much fresh pork, or you can make it all pork, but chicken is much better), one large onion, a handful of mushrooms, a stalk of celery, six Chinese potatoes, a bowl of rice, a small dessert dish of Chinese sauce (which answers for salt).
When the chicken is cleaned scrape the meat from the bones and cut into strips about one and a half inches long and one-half inch wide. If pork is used, cut the strips the same length. Slice the onions thin; soak the mushrooms ten minutes in water, then remove the stems; cut the celery into pieces one and a half inches long. Chinese potatoes require no cooking; simply wash and slice.
First put chicken (or chicken and pork, or pork) into a frying-pan with fat and fry until done, but not brown or hard. Then add the sliced onions and cook a little. Add mushrooms. Now pour enough sauce over the ingredients to make them brown. Then add some water and stew a few minutes. Add celery, and after a minute add the potatoes. Finally, add a little floured water to it, making gravy of the water which stewed it.
The Chinese potatoes, mushrooms and Chinese sauce can be procured at any Chinese grocery. If the rice is not cooked properly it will detract greatly from the good taste of the chop suey. Otherwise it is a very palatable dish.
To those who do not know how to serve it I will say: Put some rice into a bowl, then add as much chop suey as you want. Mix and pour in enough of the sauce that was used in cooking it. Tea is usually taken with this dish.
Canned chicken
Joint the chicken as for fricassee, cover with cold water, and bring slowly to the boil. Simmer until tender, but not broken. When done add salt to the liquor, boil all up once, then remove the chicken and pack in wide-mouthed jars. Pack in as tightly as possible. Stand the jars at the side of the range in a pan of boiling water, boil up the chicken liquor, fill the jars to overflowing with the scalding liquid and seal immediately.