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Pressed Chicken
An old chicken may be used for this.
Draw and singe as directed. Wipe well with a damp towel, put in a kettle and cover with cold water. Place over a moderate fire, and simmer gently until the meat falls from the bones; add one teaspoonful of salt when about half done. It will take about three or four hours to cook, if the fowl is old. When done, take the meat from the bones and cut it into small pieces, not over a half inch square.
Put the bones and skin back into the kettle, and boil until the liquor is reduced to one and a half pints, then strain, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Mix this with the chicken, pour the whole into a square tin mould and stand in a very cold place over night. A light weight may be placed on top to press it together, a flat-iron on a small board is best. When hard and cold, turn out of the mould, garnish with parsley, and serve.
This is nice for picnics.
A jellied chicken loaf that sets on the gelatin cooked out of the bones alone — no packaged gelatin is added, and none is needed if the stock is reduced properly.
- The hinge: reduce the stock hardEverything depends on boiling the strained bone liquor down to one and a half pints (3 cups) so it is dense enough to set firm when cold. Test it by chilling a spoonful on a saucer; if it does not gel within a few minutes, keep reducing. Extra collagen from a knuckle, a few chicken feet or wing tips added to the second boil is useful insurance if the set looks doubtful.
- "An old chicken"This means a stewing hen or boiling fowl, an ex-layer of 4-6 lb with tough connective tissue and plenty of collagen. Supermarket broilers are 6-8 weeks old and will cook to shreds in an hour without giving up nearly as much gelatin. Look for a stewing hen at a halal or Latin market, or use two whole legs and thighs plus a carcass.
- Simmering timeThree to four hours applies to a genuine old fowl. Judge by the meat pulling from the bone rather than the clock, and keep the water at a bare tremble — a hard boil will cloud the liquor and the finished loaf will look muddy instead of clear.
- "Draw and singe"Drawing means removing the innards; singeing burned off the pin feathers over a flame. Modern birds arrive drawn and plucked, so both steps can be skipped.
- Season for coldChilled food tastes flatter than hot. Salt and pepper the reduced stock until it seems slightly too savoury warm, and it will read correctly the next day.
- The mould and the weightA loaf tin is the modern equivalent of the square tin mould. Cover the surface with parchment, set a board or a second tin on top and weight it with a couple of full cans — the recipe's flat-iron on a small board did the same job.
- "A very cold place over night"That was a cellar or icebox. Use the refrigerator, and cool the mixture down quickly before it goes in rather than letting a warm mass sit on the counter — chicken and stock spend too long in the danger zone otherwise.
- Yield and picnicsA fowl of this size will roughly fill a standard 9x5 loaf tin and should give eight or ten slices. It is genuinely good travelling food, but the set depends on cold: carry it whole in a chilled cooler and slice on arrival.
Pressed or jellied chicken belongs to the large nineteenth-century family of moulded cold meats — brawn, potted beef, chicken galantine — that let a household serve something handsome without lighting the range on the day of eating. The long simmer could be done in the cool of the evening, the loaf set overnight, and the meal came to the table cold. It is also a thrifty recipe rather than a luxurious one. The bird specified is a spent laying hen, too tough to roast, and the bones and skin are put back to boil a second time so nothing is wasted; the setting power comes entirely from collagen, at a time when commercial powdered gelatin is often said to have been less familiar in ordinary kitchens. The flat-iron pressing on a small board is the sort of homely detail such recipes rely on.