Home › A Calendar of Dinners › Grilled Chickens
Grilled Chickens
Have small spring chickens, clean and wipe well, and split down back. Soak them for an hour in olive oil that is seasoned with an onion sliced, some salt, pepper, parsley and lemon juice. Lift them from this dressing, and without wiping at all, but sprinkling over them a little flour, set to broil over a clear fire. Melt 4 tablespoons Crisco, add to it juice of 1 lemon, glass of Madeira and tablespoon cooked ham chopped as finely as it is possible to get it. Have this sauce hot, and put over chickens when taking them up.
A spatchcocked broiler with an oil marinade and a Madeira-ham butter poured over at the table. The method is sound; only the vocabulary and the fat need translating.
- Spring chickensSmall young birds, in period usage roughly 1 to 2 lb — closest now to poussin or the smallest broilers. One bird per person, or half a bird each if you can only find 2½-lb chickens, which will need proportionally longer over lower heat.
- Split down backThis is spatchcocking. Cut along either side of the backbone, remove it, then press the bird flat, cracking the breastbone. Flattening is what makes the thigh and breast finish at roughly the same time.
- CriscoThe book was written to promote Crisco, then a new hydrogenated vegetable shortening. In a finishing sauce it contributes nothing but body; unsalted butter is the obvious substitute and tastes better with the lemon and Madeira.
- A glass of MadeiraIn period usage a wine glass is reckoned at about 2 fl oz. Start with 2 oz, reduce it briefly with the lemon juice before whisking in the butter, or the sauce will taste raw and thin.
- A clear fireA bright, smokeless fire with the flames burned down. The oil clinging to the birds will drip, so if using coals, bank them to one side and finish the chickens over the cooler zone.
- The flourThe dusting is there to dry the oiled surface and encourage browning. Keep it light; a heavy coat will scorch before the bird cooks through.
- DonenessIgnore any temptation to judge by colour alone, since the marinade browns fast. A flattened poussin takes roughly 20-25 minutes total, turning once; the thickest part of the thigh should read 165°F.
- The ham"As finely as it is possible to get it" means a mince, not a dice. The recipe calls for cooked ham; chop it almost to a paste so it disperses through the sauce rather than sinking.
A Calendar of Dinners was one of the cookbooks Procter & Gamble commissioned after Crisco was introduced in 1911, which is why a shortening turns up in a sauce where butter would once have been assumed. The dish itself is much older than the fat: grilled spring chicken with a wine-and-lemon butter belongs to the Anglo-French repertoire that American hotel and household cookery absorbed through the nineteenth century, and the minced ham is a thrifty version of the ham-scented garnishes French cooking used to give body to a quick pan sauce. Spring chickens were genuinely seasonal then — birds hatched in late winter and eaten small in early summer, before year-round broiler production made "spring chicken" a size rather than a date on the calendar.