Home › The Principles of Cookery › CHICKEN, ROAST (another way)
CHICKEN, ROAST (another way)
If it is wished to stuff the chicken, a forcemeat may be made by mincing the liver and an equal quantity of bacon together, then adding a small pinch of finely-minced lemon-rind, a table-spoonful of grated bread-crumbs, a dessert-spoonful of chopped parsley, three or four chives, cut small, and a little pepper. The chicken should then be covered with slices of bacon, and a piece of buttered paper fastened over them. If preferred, a couple of boned anchovies may be substituted for the lemon-rind in the stuffing. Time to roast, half an hour. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. each. Sufficient for three persons.
A barded and stuffed roast chicken from the era when a "chicken" meant a young bird of two pounds or so. The half-hour timing is the one figure that will not survive contact with a modern supermarket bird.
- The timing is the hingeHalf an hour suits the small, young fowl the book assumes, not a 3-4 lb modern roaster, which needs roughly an hour and a quarter. Cook to 165F/74C at the thickest part of the thigh, and if the cavity is stuffed take the temperature of the stuffing as well.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the original assumed a fire or range judged by eye and experience. Start at 425F/220C for fifteen minutes, then drop to 375F/190C for the remainder.
- Buttered paperBaking parchment does the same job. It shields the bacon and breast from scorching; lift it off for the last fifteen minutes so the bacon crisps and the skin colours.
- The forcemeatRaw minced liver and bacon packed into a cavity slow the cooking of both bird and stuffing. Baking it separately in a small buttered dish for 25-30 minutes gives a better result and removes the guesswork about whether the centre reached temperature.
- Spoon measuresA Victorian tablespoon is roughly the modern 15 ml, though period spoons varied; a dessert-spoonful is about 10 ml, or two teaspoons.
- Boned anchoviesThe alternative to lemon rind means salted anchovies, rinsed and boned; two whole fish yield about four fillets, which mashed can go into the stuffing. The recipe adds no salt in either version, and none is needed with the anchovy.
- Chives"Three or four chives" means three or four individual stalks, so perhaps a scant teaspoon chopped. Cassell's is being sparing; a tablespoon is closer to modern taste.
- Cost and yield2s 6d was a substantial sum for a small bird in the late Victorian period. Three servings matches a bird of that size; a modern roaster will feed four to six.
Barding — wrapping lean meat in sheets of fat bacon or pork back fat — was standard practice for roasting before reliable oven thermostats, because a young chicken set before a fierce fire dries out long before the legs are done. The buttered paper over the bacon is a second layer of the same insurance, a technique carried over from spit-roasting, where the cook could see and hear the meat scorching. The forcemeat here follows the old economy of using the bird's own liver, drawn with the giblets and too small to be worth anything alone; the lemon rind and the alternative of anchovy both belong to a long English tradition of sharpening rich poultry stuffings with something acid or salty. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, a vast late-Victorian compendium aimed at middle-class households with a cook, characteristically gives several "another way" versions of the same dish so the reader can match the method to what the larder holds and how much time the range allows.