Prairie Chicken
Clean and wash thoroughly in water with a little soda thrown in it, then rinse in clear water several times, wipe dry and fill with a good dressing; tie the legs and wings down with a cord, and stew; cover closely and use plenty of butter; cook until tender, and then place in a pan, with butter, and brown. Serve with a tart jelly.
A two-stage method — stew until tender, then brown in butter — that suits any lean wild bird. The instructions assume you already have the bird plucked and drawn, and they leave the stewing liquid entirely to your judgment.
- Sourcing the birdGreater prairie chicken is a species of conservation concern across much of its former range and is legally hunted only in a few states under licence; wild game of this kind is not sold commercially. Sharp-tailed grouse or pheasant are the closest stand-ins; guinea fowl or Cornish hens will also serve, though they differ in size and in fat, and will not want quite the same handling.
- The soda wash"A little soda" most likely means baking soda, a spoonful in a basin of cold water. Such washes were used on game, presumably to cut strong flavor and any lingering blood from shot birds. It is optional now; a thorough cold rinse does the same work, and long soaking in soda water can soften the skin.
- Stewing liquidThe recipe says only "stew," with no amount. Use about an inch of stock or water in a heavy covered pot, enough to keep the underside moist while the top steams — not enough to submerge the bird, or the browning stage has nothing to work with.
- Dressing inside the birdThe recipe says only "a good dressing"; a bread-based stuffing is the likeliest reading. Because the bird is stewed with the dressing in place, the center of the stuffing must reach 165F along with the thigh meat; pack it loosely so heat can penetrate.
- TimingA wild bird of about 2 lb takes 45 minutes to an hour and a quarter, depending entirely on its age. Older birds can need two hours. Test the thigh with a skewer rather than watching the clock.
- BrowningTransfer the drained bird to a hot pan with fresh butter, or to a shallow dish in a hot oven, and finish for 10 to 15 minutes, basting once. The recipe specifies neither an oven nor a temperature. The point is color and crisped skin, not further cooking.
- Plenty of butterThis is not embellishment. Prairie chicken and grouse carry almost no fat, and the breast dries out fast; barding the breast with bacon or a butter-soaked cloth during the stew is worth doing.
- Tart jelly and yieldCurrant, crabapple, or highbush cranberry jelly, served cold alongside. One bird serves two, or three at a table with several other dishes.
Prairie chicken meant the pinnated grouse of the tallgrass prairie, and in the second half of the nineteenth century it was a market bird: shipped east by the barrel from Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas and sold in city game stalls, which is why it turns up in a general household cookbook alongside beef and chicken rather than in a hunter's manual. Plowing of the prairie and unregulated market hunting collapsed the population, and though federal and state game laws caught up in the early twentieth century the bird's range went on contracting with continued agricultural conversion, so that a recipe that once needed no explanation now needs a substitute. The treatment here, stewing covered before a hard finish in butter, is a common nineteenth-century answer to any lean, possibly elderly wild bird, and the tart jelly served with it follows the long European convention of pairing acid fruit with game.