A young woman informs me that one day she went into a butcher's shop (in a part of town where prosperous families live) and ordered a chicken. The butcher took one down, but when he cut it open such a stench came from it that she stepped back in horror. Yet the man tried to persuade her to take it, remarking: "That's all right! Just wash it in a solution of borax, or in vinegar and water and the odor will disappear."
This happened in New York City in the year 1912; it was not an exceptional case; thousands of such offensive carcasses are sold in American cities daily. Nor is it necessary to cut them open to know that they are unfit for food. Their greenish, mummified, rigid appearance reveals their unpalatable condition. Daily, for years, as I have walked along the streets of New York and seen these hideous bird corpses brazenly exposed for sale, I have wondered at a community which will tolerate such a thing. As the authors of Bulletin No. 115 of the Bureau of Chemistry[3] say, a careful inspection of cold-storage fowls before cooking "would do much to destroy any appetite which might otherwise have been manifested for these birds when cooked."
On pages 100-101 of his monumental work on foods and their adulteration which should be read by all consumers as well as dealers because of its impartial statement of the case, Dr. Wiley remarks pertinently that "the keeping of chickens with the intestinal contents undisturbed does not appeal to the imagination of the consumer any more than would the freezing of the carcass of a beef or hog with the viscera remaining in it."
Elsewhere the great reformer put his finger on the most vulnerable and undeniable aspect of the storage business: "Palatability is one of the elements of wholesomeness, and we find in cold storage a tremendous decrease in palatability."
From this kind of tainted, unappetizing, unpalatable chicken to the poulet de Bresse, what a long road we have to travel. Under present conditions, as a matter of course, it makes no difference what we feed our fowls; all are foul alike, and will remain so as long as the American public remains content to fall so far below the European gastronomic level.
The packers and dealers, of course, laugh at Dr. Wiley's statement that, under the present scientific methods of production, poultry can be furnished in a fresh state all the year round (as it is in Europe). They do not want it fresh; they want it in their refrigerators so they can regulate and artificially raise prices. The worst offenders are the men who speculate in storage fowls, making, say, $10,000 or $20,000 in one day. That enables them to cross the Atlantic and eat edible chicken in Paris.
The simplest way for the consumer to thwart the conspirators against his appetite and stomach is to buy of genuinely Kosher butchers, who by their tenets are not allowed to handle cold-storage fowls; or direct of the farmer, with whom an arrangement can be made to send the freshly killed and promptly cleaned poultry to one's home. In this way the total cost does not exceed regular city prices, and oh! the difference in the effect on our well-being, not to speak of getting even with the "icemen."
The introduction of parcel's post greatly reduced the cost of this method of securing fresh poultry. In European countries, particularly France and Germany, the parcel's post has done much to eliminate middlemen, and many thousands of consumers make use of this chance to get provisions fresh and direct from the producer.
There are reasons to believe that the present high prices of beef and mutton will never come down again, but will climb higher still because the former vast grazing-grounds of the West are being cut up into farms. But to the raising of chickens there is no limit. By applying the methods of intensive farming the supply can be steadily increased and prices lowered. Chicken day is destined to become more and more frequent, and it is for the consumer to decide whether his chicken dinner shall be appetizing, enjoyable, and beneficial, or remain what it is now in most cases, a gastronomic calamity.
From the point of view of Flavor, which is the main theme of the present volume, this subject is of such importance that a few more pages must be devoted to it.