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Roast Guinea Chickens
Put 2 tablespoons Crisco in each of the birds, this prevents them getting dry. Slit 2 slices bacon once or twice then tie over breasts of birds, which should be trussed for roasting. Wrap them in Criscoed paper and bake in a quick oven for 30 minutes, baste well and frequently; for the last 8 minutes remove paper and bacon; sprinkle with a little flour, salt and pepper, baste well, and let brown. Serve on hot dish, garnished with rolls of bacon. Hand with it gravy, bread sauce, and guava jelly.
A straightforward roast from one of Procter & Gamble's Crisco-promoting cookbooks, written when guinea fowl were common enough on the table to need no introduction. Two things need attention: the oven heat and the doneness.
- Quick ovenRead this as roughly 400-450F. The high heat is what makes the short roast plausible, since the paper wrapping shields the skin until the last few minutes.
- Thirty minutes is not a guaranteeA guinea fowl of 2 to 2 1/2 lb may be done in 35-45 minutes at that heat, but a larger bird will not. Take it to 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, away from the bone, rather than trusting the clock.
- Guinea chickensThese are guinea fowl, sold today as guinea hen, usually 2-3 lb dressed. The meat is darker, leaner and gamier than chicken, which is exactly why the recipe piles on fat. A small chicken or a pair of poussins can stand in, with less need for barding.
- Crisco and Criscoed paperCrisco was new hydrogenated vegetable shortening when this book appeared, and it is here because the book was written to sell it. Any solid fat or butter works; "Criscoed paper" means parchment brushed generously with fat, which does the job of a modern foil tent.
- The two tablespoons insideThe fat goes into the body cavity, not under the skin, and melts down through the breast as the bird roasts. Combined with the bacon over the breast, it is the whole defence against a dry bird.
- Basting through paperBasting "well and frequently" means opening the oven repeatedly, which fights the high heat. Baste once or twice while the paper is on, then concentrate on the final uncovered minutes when the flour, salt and pepper are browning.
- Bread sauceAn English accompaniment of milk infused with onion and clove, thickened with fresh breadcrumbs and finished with butter. The book assumes you know it; it is not included on this page.
- Guava jellyThe sweet-tart counterpoint to a gamey bird, in the same role redcurrant jelly plays with venison. Redcurrant or quince jelly substitutes without complaint.
- YieldOne guinea fowl serves two, generously. The recipe is written in the plural but never says how many birds, so scale the count and servings to what you cook.
Guinea fowl are native to sub-Saharan Africa, domesticated in antiquity and known to the Romans, and were carried to the Americas along Atlantic trade routes, becoming a farmyard fixture in the American South and the Caribbean well before they were a delicacy. Guava jelly is served alongside, while the bread sauce is pure English roast-bird convention, and the pairing is a fair snapshot of an early twentieth-century American table borrowing widely. The recipe itself belongs to a genre now largely forgotten: the branded cookbook issued to teach housewives what to do with a new industrial product. Crisco reached the market in 1911, and books like this one drilled its name into every recipe, including ones where butter or bacon fat had always served. The instruction to wrap the birds in greased paper is the older technique it was recruited to advertise, a method of protecting lean game that predates the shortening by centuries.