Ada Lewis
PLAIN ROAST CHICKEN
A nice tender chicken, left whole and carefully cleaned, washed and dried.
Stuff with grated bread crumbs, pepper and salt, a little chopped onion, parsley and celery and a pinch of thyme.
Roast in moderate oven, with a few spoons of water and a little butter in the pan.
My favorite dish is plain roast chicken without any "frills." More Cordially Eda fewis
A contributor's note more than a set of instructions, so the working details are left to the cook. Here is what the original assumes you already know.
- Moderate ovenIn books of this period that generally means somewhere around 350 to 375F. Many cooks now start a bird at 425F for 20 minutes to set the skin, then drop to 350F; roasting straight through at the lower temperature is faithful to the original and gives paler, softer skin.
- The birdMarket chickens of this era were generally smaller than a modern supermarket roaster, perhaps 3 to 3 1/2 lb, though no size is recorded here. A 4 to 5 lb roaster stuffed and roasted at 350F wants roughly 1 3/4 to 2 1/4 hours.
- Doneness, which the recipe never mentionsTake the thigh to 165F and, because this bird is stuffed, check the centre of the stuffing as well; it must also reach 165F. Stuffing sits in the coldest part of the carcass and lags well behind the meat.
- Grated bread crumbsThis means dry or day-old bread grated on a box grater, coarser and drier than commercial crumbs. Around 3 to 4 cups loosely packed fills a 4 lb bird. Panko is the wrong texture; stale white bread torn and grated is right.
- Bind the stuffingAs written the stuffing is crumbs and aromatics with nothing to hold it, and it will bake dry and loose. A few tablespoons of melted butter and enough stock or milk to make it clump will correct that, and an egg if you want it to slice.
- Water and butter in the panThe water most likely serves to keep the drippings from scorching rather than to steam the bird. Two or three tablespoons answers to the "few spoons" called for; top it up if the pan runs dry, and use the residue for gravy.
- Seasoning quantitiesNone are given. For a 4 lb bird: about 1 1/2 teaspoons salt in the stuffing, half a small onion, a small handful of parsley, one rib of celery finely chopped, and a scant 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme.
- Yield and restServes four with the stuffing. Let the bird stand 15 minutes before carving; the recipe's whole point is plain roast chicken, and resting is most of the difference between good and dry.
Ada Lewis was an American stage comedienne, generally remembered for the Bowery "tough girl" roles she played in Edward Harrigan's New York comedies before moving into musical comedy and, later, films. Her contribution is typical of the celebrity charity cookbook, a genre that flourished on both sides of the Atlantic around the turn of the century: performers, politicians and society figures were asked for a favourite dish, and what came back was often a paragraph dashed off from memory rather than a tested formula, with no quantities, no times and no oven guidance. The appeal for buyers was the autograph and the glimpse of private taste, and Lewis makes hers explicit in the last line, refusing the elaborate sauces and garnishes that filled the fashionable menus of the day. The bread stuffing she describes, crumbs with onion, parsley, celery and thyme, is the plain Anglo-American forcemeat that had been standard for well over a century by the time she wrote it down.