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Baked Spring Chickens
Cut each of four chickens into seven or nine pieces, wash thoroughly and quickly, and put in a colander to drain; put a half table-spoon each of lard and butter into a dripping-pan, lay in the pieces, and add half a pint hot water; place in oven and bake half an hour, turn, taking care that they get only to a light brown, and, just before taking up, add salt and pepper to taste; when done take out in a dish and keep hot. To make the gravy, add a half pint or more of water, set the dripping-pan on the stove, and add one table-spoon flour mixed with half cup of cream or milk, stirring slowly, adding a little of the mixture at a time. Let cook thoroughly, stirring constantly to prevent burning, and to make the gravy nice and smooth; season more if necessary.-Mrs. L. Hush.
A plain oven-braise rather than a true roast: the chicken sits in water and its own fat, and the pan liquid becomes the gravy. Two things need attention — the birds are far smaller than modern supermarket chickens, and half an hour will not cook bone-in pieces through.
- What a spring chicken wasA young bird of roughly 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 lb dressed, closer to today's poussin or a small broiler than to a 4-5 lb roaster. Four of them served a large table; a single modern chicken, cut up, feeds four and takes the recipe down to a quarter of these quantities.
- Seven or nine piecesMost likely two drumsticks, two thighs, two wings and the breast whole (seven), or the breast split and the back added (nine); the recipe does not say. Any standard eight-piece cut works.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; a wood or coal range had no thermostat or dial, and heat was judged by hand and experience. Treat this as a moderate oven, about 350-375F — enough to colour the skin lightly without boiling the pan water away.
- TimingHalf an hour was probably enough for pieces off birds this small; modern bone-in pieces need more like 40-50 minutes. Cook to 165F in the breast and about 175F at the thigh bone rather than by the clock, and add water if the pan threatens to run dry.
- Dripping-panA shallow metal roasting pan or a large rimmed baking sheet with sides deep enough to hold a half pint of water. A wide oven-safe skillet is convenient since the gravy is finished on the stovetop in the same vessel.
- The fat is scantHalf a tablespoon each of lard and butter for four chickens is barely a film; the birds render their own fat as they cook. Use a tablespoon or two, and butter alone if you have no lard.
- Salt at the endSalt was often withheld until the end on the belief that early salting drew out the juices. Salting the pieces before they go in the oven seasons them better and does no harm.
- Gravy thickeningOne tablespoon of flour to a pint of pan liquid gives a very thin sauce. For a gravy that coats, use two to three tablespoons whisked smooth into the cream first, then trickle it into the simmering liquid — added dry or in a lump it will go grainy.
- YieldAs written, eight to twelve servings. Strain the gravy if the pan has caught at the edges.
"Spring chicken" was a seasonal term with real meaning in a household that kept its own fowl: birds hatched in spring were killed young through early summer, while the laying hens and older roosters went into the stewpot or fricassee where long moist cooking could soften them. Buckeye Cookery, compiled in Ohio in the 1870s and 80s from contributions by named local women — Mrs. L. Hush here — is full of this kind of practical division of the flock. The method itself sits between roasting and braising, a compromise suited to the wood- or coal-fired range, where a little water in the pan protected small pieces from scorching in an oven whose heat was hard to regulate, and left behind the browned liquid that became the milk gravy.