Smothered Chickens.
Prepare the chickens as for broiling, splitting each down the back. Lay flat in a dripping-pan, pour a cupful of boiling water upon them; set in the oven and invert another pan over them, so as to cover them tightly. Roast half an hour, lift the cover and baste freely with butter. In ten minutes more, baste with gravy from the dripping-pan. In five more, with melted butter—abundantly—going all over the fowls. Keeping the chickens covered except while basting them, increase the heat, until you ascertain, by testing with a fork, that they are done. They should be coffee-colored all over, rather than brown. Dish, salt and pepper them; cover while you thicken the gravy with browned flour, adding a little hot water, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley. Boil up; put a few spoonfuls over the chickens—the rest in a gravy tureen.