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Pressed Chicken
Divide a chicken in the usual manner, boil until tender, then remove the skin and bones, cut fine and season with pepper, salt and butter, let the water boil away that the chickens were boiled in, until only sufficient remains to moisten it, thicken as for the table, mix thoroughly; press in a shallow dish and when cold cut in thin slices. This is nice for teas.
A jellied chicken loaf of the sort that filled sandwiches and cold supper plates before sliced deli meat existed. The whole thing hinges on reducing the cooking liquid far enough that it sets the meat when cold.
- "Divide a chicken in the usual manner"Joint a 4-5 lb bird into halves or quarters so it fits the pot. A mature fowl was probably what was meant; a modern roasting chicken should be tender in 60-75 minutes at a bare simmer, where an older bird would need considerably longer.
- "Thicken as for the table"This means make it into gravy consistency — a spoonful or two of flour worked smooth in cold water or rubbed into butter, stirred into the reduced broth and cooked out for a couple of minutes. It is a light bind, not a paste.
- How far to reduceFrom a whole chicken, aim to get the broth down to roughly a cup; it should feel tacky between the fingers. A mature bird simmered on the bone yields some natural gelatin; if your reduced stock does not gel when a spoonful is chilled, soften a teaspoon of powdered gelatin in cold water and stir it into the hot liquid.
- Keep the skin out, keep the dark meat inThe instruction to discard skin is worth following — it turns slack and grey in a cold loaf. Mix light and dark meat together, cut by hand to about the size of a pea rather than shredded, so the slices hold a visible texture.
- PressingPack into a loaf pan or shallow dish lined with plastic wrap, lay another pan on top and weight it with a few cans. Six to eight hours in the refrigerator; overnight is better.
- Chill promptlyThe original assumed a cold pantry. Get the packed loaf into the refrigerator within two hours of cooking and keep it there — a warm, moist, low-acid meat loaf is exactly the medium bacteria like. Eat within three days.
- SeasoningSeason the meat while it is still hot and taste the thickened broth before combining, since it will taste flatter cold than warm. Be generous with salt and pepper; a scrape of nutmeg or a little lemon zest is period-appropriate.
- Yield and servingA 4-5 lb chicken gives a loaf that slices into roughly 8-10 portions. Serve in thin slices with mustard, pickles, or between buttered bread; "nice for teas" points to the light evening meal it was meant for.
Pressed chicken belongs to a long line of pressed and potted meats that answered a practical household problem: how to make a cooked bird last, and how to serve it without lighting the stove again. The technique is related to that behind head cheese, brawn and jellied veal — cook the meat until the connective tissue dissolves, reduce the liquid until it is loaded with gelatin, then pack the two together under weight so the whole thing sets into something sliceable. Recipes of this type appear regularly in American cookbooks from the mid-1800s into the early twentieth century, often in the supper or tea chapters, in households where dinner had been eaten at midday and the evening meal was lighter. That it calls for the cooking water to be boiled down rather than thrown out is characteristic of the period's thrift: the broth is not a byproduct here, it is the ingredient holding the dish together.