Home › Poultry › Boiled Chicken
Boiled Chicken
Prepare as you would a turkey. Wrap the chicken in a clean, white cloth and put in a pot with enough water to cover it; keep the pot closely covered so that no steam can escape; boil slowly until done. If young, will cook in one hour; if old, in two hours. Make a gravy from the liquor in which the chicken has been boiled, adding butter, pepper, salt and flour. Serve with pickled cauliflower.
A plain poached fowl, given in the shorthand of a book that assumed you had already read the turkey entry. Two things carry the dish: the cloth wrapping and a genuine simmer rather than a boil.
- "Prepare as you would a turkey"In books of this sort the cross-reference generally covers drawing, cleaning and trussing the bird; the turkey entry itself is not given here. With a supermarket chicken, all that remains is to truss it so it holds shape and cooks evenly.
- The clothWrapping in a clean cotton cloth (a floured pudding cloth, muslin or several layers of cheesecloth) keeps the skin from tearing and the bird from breaking up as it moves in the water. Tie it loosely and leave a tail of string outside the pot so you can lift it clear.
- "Boil slowly" means simmerWater at a hard boil toughens breast meat and clouds the liquor. Hold it at 180–190F, with only the occasional bubble breaking, and the meat stays tender and the broth stays clear.
- Timing and donenessOne hour will do for a 3–4 lb bird; the two-hour figure is for an old stewing hen, which the modern market rarely sells. Ignore the clock at the end and check the thigh joint reads 165F.
- The gravy proportionsNone are given. For about 2 cups of the cooking liquor, work 2 tablespoons butter with 2 tablespoons flour, cook the roux a minute or two, then whisk in the hot liquor and simmer until it coats a spoon. Salt carefully — unsalted poaching water gives a bland base, and a well-salted one reduces to something sharp.
- Season the waterThe recipe calls for nothing but water. An onion, a carrot, a few peppercorns and a bay leaf in the pot cost nothing and improve both bird and gravy.
- Pickled cauliflowerA common household pickle in the period, and now largely a specialty purchase. Any sharp pickle or a mustard sauce serves the same function: cutting the richness of a flour-thickened gravy.
- YieldA 4 lb bird serves four generously, with the remaining broth worth keeping for soup.
Boiling was the ordinary fate of a chicken that had outlived its usefulness in the yard, and cookbooks of this period routinely distinguish the young bird of an hour from the old bird of two — a distinction that only matters when your poultry has a working life behind it. The cloth wrapping belongs to the same tradition as the pudding cloth: cloth was how you kept a large thing intact in boiling water and got it out again. Serving the fowl with a flour-and-butter gravy made from its own liquor, sharpened by a pickle, was the standard English-American treatment, and the near-identical instructions given for turkey and chicken in books of this sort show how much these compilers relied on cross-reference rather than repeating themselves.