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Chicken Broth
This may be made from the inferior joints of a fowl, the best pieces being cooked in some other way; or the fowl may be used after it is cooked, in which case only just enough water must be put over it to cover it. Roast it for twenty minutes before putting it to boil; by this means the flavour will be improved. Generally speaking, a quart of water may be allowed for a medium-sized fowl. Put it into cold water, with half a tea-cupful of rice. When it boils add an onion cut in small pieces, and salt to taste. Simmer very gently for a couple of hours, and skim the liquid carefully. If there is time, pour it out, let it get cold, remove every particle of fat and boil it up again. About fifteen minutes before serving add a tea-cupful of chopped parsley. A few pieces of beef put in with the chicken are a great improvement. Probable cost, chicken, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for one pint of broth.
A frugal broth built on carcass ends and a mature bird, with rice cooked into it as thickening. The instructions are sound; the units and the bird itself need translating.
- The hinge: brown it firstThe twenty-minute roast before the water goes on is what separates this from pallid boiled-chicken water. Give the joints 20 minutes at 425F until the skin has taken colour, then scrape the roasting pan into the pot as well.
- "A fowl" is not a supermarket chickenA Victorian fowl was a laying hen past her prime — tough, gelatinous, deeply flavoured. A stewing hen or a bag of collected wings, backs and necks will do the same job. A young 3-4 lb chicken gives up its flavour in about an hour and turns woolly if held for two.
- Teacup measuresA Victorian teacup runs about 5 to 6 fl oz, so half a teacupful of rice is roughly 1/4 to 1/3 cup. That is enough to thicken a pint of broth noticeably; use less if you want it clear.
- Water and yieldA quart of water reducing to one pint of finished broth is a hard reduction — expect two hours of gentle simmering, uncovered or barely covered. One pint serves one generously or two as a small first course.
- Simmer means simmerA rolling boil emulsifies the fat and clouds the broth, which is precisely what the careful skimming is meant to prevent. Hold it at a bare tremble, barely a bubble breaking.
- The overnight chill is worth itThe chill is worth it -- Cooling the broth and lifting the solid fat cap off is far more effective than skimming hot, and it costs nothing but time. The recipe only asks that it 'get cold' if there is time; reheat to a full boil before serving, as it directs.
- Parsley timingA whole teacupful of chopped parsley added fifteen minutes out will taste stewed and grassy. Stir in two or three tablespoons in the last minute or two off the heat, or serve it at the table.
- Salt and the beefSalt is added early here, before the long reduction — go light and correct it at the end, since halving the liquid doubles the seasoning. The recipe does not say what cut the "few pieces of beef" should be; any gelatinous stewing beef will add body, and it does improve the broth considerably.
Chicken broth in a book like this one is medicine as much as dinner. Nineteenth-century household manuals often filed it under invalid cookery, alongside beef tea, arrowroot and calf's-foot jelly: light, salted, easily digested nourishment for the sick, the convalescent and the very young, at a time when liquid food was standard medical advice in fevers. The economy of the method is equally of its period — the recipe itself directs that the best pieces be cooked some other way, or that an already-cooked fowl be used up. The 'probable cost' line (2s. 6d. for the chicken) belongs to a book addressing a household that kept accounts, for whom a fowl was a real expense. The rice cooked into the liquid, rather than served alongside, reads as a way of giving a thin broth enough substance to count as a meal.