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Chicken Broth (Cut a chicken into several)
Cut a chicken into several pieces, put it into a stewpan with one quart of water, and a little salt; as it boils, skim it well, and let simmer gently for two hours. If liked, rice or pearl barley can be cooked in the broth and served with it; about one ounce of either.
A bare-bones invalid broth: one bird, one quart of water, salt, two hours. The proportions are the whole recipe, so they are worth reading carefully.
- The ratio is the pointOne quart of water to a whole jointed chicken is a very small amount of liquid for the bird — deliberately so. This is a concentrated restorative broth, not a stockpot, and depending on how covered the pan is it may reduce appreciably over two hours, leaving perhaps two or three cups.
- Cut into several piecesJointing matters more than it looks. Exposed bone and cut surfaces release gelatine and flavour far faster than a whole carcass would in the same time and the same small volume of water.
- Simmer gently means barely movingA bare shiver at the surface, well below a boil. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat into the liquid and turns a clear broth cloudy and greasy, which defeats the purpose of the careful skimming in the line before.
- Skim as it comes up, not afterThe grey foam that rises in the first ten minutes is coagulated protein, and it is easiest to lift off before it breaks up and disperses. Skim again for fat once the broth has been chilled, when it lifts off in a solid sheet.
- Rice or barley: one ounceAbout two tablespoons of raw grain, which is a modest thickening rather than a soup of rice. Pearl barley wants a good 40 minutes and will cloud the broth; rice needs 15 to 20. Add either toward the end rather than at the start.
- Salt lightly at the start"A little salt" is right for a liquid that will reduce by a third or more. Season properly only at the end, once you can see how far it has gone down.
- What to do with the chickenThe meat will be exhausted of flavour but is not wasted — it could be shredded back into the broth for an invalid, and cookery books of the period are full of rissoles and curries made from meat already cooked.
Broths like this occupy their own quiet corner of nineteenth-century cookery books, sitting in the soup chapter but really belonging to the sickroom. Chicken broth, beef tea and barley water made up the standard trio of invalid cookery, long recognised as a branch of the subject in its own right and taught seriously alongside the elaborate entrées of the period. The logic of the age held that a patient could absorb nourishment from a liquid when solids were refused, which is why the recipe insists on a small quantity of water and a long gentle simmer: the aim was strength in the cup, not volume in the pot. The optional ounce of rice or pearl barley is the one concession to substance, and barley in particular had been the invalid's grain in British kitchens for centuries before this book was written.