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Roast Chicken, Duck, or Turkey
Clean the bird as usual, then dust it inside and out with salt and pepper. Fill with Bread Stuffing, (see recipe: Bread Stuffing for Baked Fish) to which a cupful of minced celery, or halved oysters, has been added, and put a little stuffing in the neck and around at the sides, where the crop has been. Then truss the bird and rub it all over with Snowdrift. Dust it thickly with flour and place it on a rack in a dripping-pan, or in a double-roaster, sprinkling about two and a half tablespoonfuls of flour on the bottom of the pan. Set to cook in a hot oven, 400 to 425 degrees F., and when the flour in the bottom of the pan is colored a light brown, pour in sufficient boiling water to barely cover the bottom. Add a tablespoonful of Snowdrift and baste the bird with this mixture, occasionally replenishing the liquid if it evaporates too rapidly. Allow eighteen minutes to the pound for chicken, twenty minutes to the pound for duck and turkey. When the meat is done the gravy will be self-thickened and ready prepared in the pan, if care has been taken to stir it well whenever the bird has been basted.
An advertising-cookbook roast, built around a flour-and-fat pan gravy that thickens itself as you baste. The method still works; the timings and the stuffing need attention.
- SnowdriftA cottonseed-oil shortening from the Southern Cotton Oil Company, sold from the early 1900s and later made with hydrogenated oil. Any solid vegetable shortening substitutes directly, as does softened butter, though butter browns faster.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockEighteen minutes to the pound at 400-425F will dry out a modern chicken badly; a 4 lb bird needs closer to an hour. Pull poultry when the thickest part of the thigh reads 165F and the juices run clear.
- Duck is a different birdTwenty minutes to the pound suits a duck only because the fat needs time to render. Prick the skin, expect a great deal of fat in the pan, and pour most of it off before building the gravy or it will never come together.
- Stuffing inside the birdIf you stuff, the center of the stuffing must also reach 165F, which usually means the breast overcooks waiting for it. Baking the dressing in a separate dish is the reliable route; a halved lemon and onion in the cavity will do the aromatic work.
- Oysters in the dressingThe recipe offers halved oysters as an alternative to minced celery; oyster stuffing was a common holiday variation. They release a lot of liquid, so slacken the bread mixture less than you otherwise would.
- "Where the crop has been"The crop is the pouch at the base of the neck, removed during cleaning, leaving a loose flap of skin. Skewer or sew that flap down over the neck stuffing so it does not gape and burn.
- Double-roasterA covered two-piece roasting pan. Used covered it steams as much as it roasts; leave the lid off for the last third if you want crisp skin.
- The self-thickening gravyThe flour dusted on the bird and scattered in the pan is the roux. It must brown to a light tan before the boiling water goes in, or the gravy tastes pasty. Stir the pan bottom at every basting.
- YieldA 4-5 lb chicken serves four to five, a duck two to three, a 12-14 lb turkey ten to twelve. Rest the bird 15 to 20 minutes before carving.
A New Snowdrift Cook Book is a manufacturer's book: Snowdrift was a cottonseed-oil shortening from the Southern Cotton Oil Company, and cottonseed oil, long a byproduct of the cotton gin, became a serious American cooking fat once hydrogenation made it firm and shelf-stable in the first decades of the twentieth century. Books like this were given away or sold cheaply to persuade cooks that the new fat would do everything lard and butter did, which is why the shortening turns up in every stage here, rubbed on the skin, added to the basting liquid, and worked into the gravy. The roasting technique itself is older than the product: dusting a bird with flour to build a crust, and flouring the pan so the drippings arrive already thickened, was standard nineteenth-century practice, a way of getting gravy without a separate saucepan. The specific oven temperature is the modern touch, marking the point when gas and electric ranges with thermometers replaced the cook's judgment of a "hot oven."