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Poultry, Boiled, Remarks On
In picking, be careful not to break the skin; in drawing, not to break the gall-bladder. Let the fowls hang from two to five days, for the most delicate fowl will be tough and thready if too soon cooked. When to be used, draw, singe without blackening, and wash thoroughly, passing a stream of water again and again through the inside. Boiled fowls must be very neatly trussed, as they have small aid from skewers; and nothing is more indecorous than to see unfortunates on a dinner-table, "whose dying limbs no decent hands composed." Put them on with plenty of water, a little warmed, and in a floured cloth if you like. Having, as usual, skimmed them very carefully, simmer by the side of the fire from thirty-five minutes to an hour and a half, according to the size of the fowl. A small tureen of very good barley or rice broth, seasoned with shredded parsley and young onions, may be added at the same time, if a shank or small cutlets of neck-mutton be added; which last may be frugally served in the broth. Some good cooks put fresh suet and slices of peeled lemon to boil with fowls, if lean, but larding is better; white-legged fowls are most worthy of attention, whether for eating or appearance.
A page of working notes rather than a numbered method, but it tells you how to boil a fowl from start to table. Most of it still holds; a few points assume a bird that arrived with its feathers and innards attached.
- The hinge: simmer, never boilThe instruction to "simmer by the side of the fire" is the whole technique. Water at a rolling boil tightens and shreds the breast muscle; hold the pot at a bare tremble, around 180F, with the surface barely moving.
- HangingTwo to five days of hanging was how a freshly killed bird was tenderised before refrigeration existed. A supermarket chicken has already rested and needs none of it. If you are handling a bird from a small producer, any ageing belongs in the refrigerator at 40F or below, not in an outhouse.
- Picking, drawing, singeingPlucking, gutting and burning off the residual hairs over a flame. A bile leak from a broken gall-bladder makes the surrounding flesh inedibly bitter, which is why it gets its own warning. None of this applies to a bird bought oven-ready.
- Trussing and the floured clothThe text notes that a boiled fowl has "small aid from skewers", so it is tied with string: wings folded back, legs drawn tight against the body. The floured cloth is a loose wrap of cloth dusted with flour, generally said to keep the skin pale and unbroken. Optional, and easily replaced by careful handling.
- TimingThirty-five minutes suits a small spring chicken; ninety belongs to a large boiling fowl, an old laying hen you will rarely see now. For a 4-5 lb roasting chicken, expect 60 to 75 minutes at a bare simmer, and go by an instant-read thermometer reading 165F in the thickest part of the thigh rather than by the clock.
- SkimmingThe grey scum that rises in the first ten minutes is coagulated protein. Taking it off patiently is what gives the clear, pale broth this style of cookery is after.
- The mutton and the brothA shank or small cutlets of neck-mutton simmered alongside turn the cooking liquid into a second course, which the text says may be "frugally served in the broth"; lamb neck does the same job today. The passage is not explicit about where the barley or rice broth itself is made.
- Suet, lemon and lardingA lean bird was basted from within by threading strips of pork fat through the breast with a larding needle, which the writer prefers to the suet-and-lemon method. Slices of peeled lemon in the water were held to keep the flesh white. Modern chickens carry enough fat that neither is necessary.
- White-legged fowlsWhite-legged birds were commonly thought finer-fleshed and better-looking on the dish than dark- or yellow-legged ones, which is why the writer calls them "most worthy of attention, whether for eating or appearance". It is a distinction about breed and appearance, not about cooking.
- ServingNo yield is given. A 4-5 lb bird boiled this way serves four to six, and is traditionally sent to table under parsley, egg or celery sauce made with some of the cooking liquid.
Boiled fowl was the invalid's dish and the plain-dinner dish of nineteenth-century Britain, the counterpart to the roast: gentler on the digestion, cheaper in fuel, and forgiving of the tough old laying hen that a household ate once she stopped producing. That is why the timing here stretches to an hour and a half, a figure that makes no sense for the young birds sold today. The passage is teaching judgement rather than a formula, and its concerns are those of a kitchen that received poultry whole and feathered. The quoted line about "dying limbs no decent hands composed" is a scrap of verse pressed into service to make a point about trussing, a rhetorical habit common in Victorian cookery writing, where a badly presented bird was treated as a failure of decorum as much as of cooking.