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Roast Stuffed Chicken
6 tablespoons breadcrumbs, 2 tablespoons Crisco, 2 tablespoons chopped cooked ham, 1 beaten egg, 1 teaspoon chopped parsley, 1 chicken, 2 tablespoons milk, seasoning red pepper, white pepper, salt, powdered mace and herbs to taste. Clean and draw chicken. Melt Crisco, add it to crumbs, ham, egg, parsley, milk, and seasonings; mix and place in breast of fowl. If young chicken leave on feet, which should be scalded and skinned; if an older bird, cut off legs half-way to first joint, turn back pinions, run skewer through them, catching top part of legs; tie bottom part of legs together. Set in hot oven from 3/4 to 1 1/4 hours, according to size; baste well with melted Crisco, and about 15 minutes before it is finished dredge with flour and brown. To make brown gravy, pour from tin fat, sprinkle in 2 teaspoons browned flour, then add 1 cup boiling water, containing 1/2 teaspoon extract beef, salt and pepper; allow this to boil 3 minutes, strain over chicken, or serve in sauceboat.
A straightforward roast bird from one of Procter & Gamble's Crisco promotional cookbooks, where the shortening turns up in every recipe whether it needs to or not. Most of the work here is in the trussing instructions, which assume a bird bought whole with feet and pinions attached.
- The stuffing goes in the neck end"Place in breast of fowl" means the neck cavity and the skin flap over the crop, not the body cavity. The quantity given — about six tablespoons of crumbs plus binder — is only enough for that pocket, so do not expect it to fill a bird.
- Hot ovenThe book gives no temperature; period "hot oven" is generally taken as somewhere in the 400-450F range. The given range of 3/4 to 1 1/4 hours (45 minutes to 1 1/4 hours) is stated as varying "according to size," so judge by the bird's weight and by temperature rather than by the clock.
- Judge by temperature, not clockThe original has no doneness test. Cook until the thickest part of the thigh reads 165-175F and the stuffing in the neck reaches 165F; stuffed poultry lags behind unstuffed.
- CriscoAny solid vegetable shortening, or use butter or the chicken's own fat for basting — the flavour will be better. Crisco was new in 1911 and this book exists to sell it.
- Extract of beefA concentrated meat paste such as Bovril or Liebig's. A half teaspoon of beef bouillon base, or 1 cup of good beef stock in place of the water, does the same job.
- Browned flourFlour dry-toasted in a pan or a slow oven until nut-coloured. It thickens less than raw flour but gives the gravy its colour without the pasty taste; toast a few tablespoons at a time and keep it.
- The feetThe recipe leaves the feet on only for a young chicken, which suggests they served here as a sign of youth. Skip it; truss with string, tuck the wing tips ("pinions") under the back, and tie the drumsticks together.
- Mace and red pepperMace is the outer covering of nutmeg — use about 1/8 teaspoon, as it is assertive. "Red pepper" here is cayenne, a pinch, not paprika.
- YieldA 4 lb bird serves four. Rest it 10-15 minutes before carving; make the gravy in that time.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil, cookery editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, for Procter & Gamble, and it belongs to the wave of manufacturer-sponsored cookbooks that followed Crisco's 1911 introduction — the recipes lean heavily on the product, including ones like this that a cook would traditionally have basted with butter or drippings. The trussing instructions are the older part of the page: the choice between leaving the feet on a young bird and cutting the legs of an older one reflects a market where poultry arrived whole and undrawn, and the cook, not the butcher, judged the bird's age. Filling the crop rather than the body cavity is often said to be nineteenth-century English practice, and the seasoning — mace, parsley, a little chopped ham, white and red pepper — is the conservative forcemeat of Victorian household cookery carried into an American promotional pamphlet largely unchanged.