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Some Kitchen Kinks: Broiled
Broiled Squab. - Singe a squab, wash, and wipe dry; then with a sharp knife split it down the back from the neck to the tail. Lay it open and clean the inside; cut through at the joints, releasing the tendons. Brush over inside and out with melted butter, season with pepper and salt, and dust with flour. Broil over a hot fire ten minutes.
Serve on hot buttered toast and garnish the little dish prettily with parsley. Quail or any small bird may be cooked in the same way.
Broiled Chicken.-Prepare a tender chicken in the same fashion as directed for squab. Unless it is exceedingly small, half a portion will be enough to cook for an invalid; and if the appetite is only equal to very dainty meals, the tender little breast may be sufficient. Season with pepper and salt, brush with melted butter, put in a greased broiler, and cook for twenty minutes, turning the broiler frequently. Keep the flesh side longer over the coals than the bony portion. When the chicken is delicately browned, put it in a pan and set in a hot oven for ten or twelve minutes. Serve hot with toast.
Creamed Chicken. - 1/2 cupful of thin cream; 1/2 tablespoonful of cornstarch; 1 tablespoonful of butter; pepper and salt; ½ cupful of cold chicken breast. a sauce Make white from the cream, cornstarch, butter, and seasoning. Cut the chicken into cubes, and heat in the sauce. Serve on buttered toast with a baked potato. The meat which is taken from the bones when preparing chicken broth may be utilized for this dish; or, if desired, and if the patient can digest it, it can be made into a chicken salad.
Three linked invalid-cookery dishes built on the same technique: split the bird flat, butter it, and put it close to fierce heat. The instructions assume a hinged wire broiler held over live coals, which is why the timings look short.
- Splitting down the back is spatchcockingCutting from neck to tail and pressing the bird open flattens it so the whole surface cooks at once. Snipping through the joints, as directed, stops the legs and wings curling back off the heat.
- "A hot fire" means coals, not an ovenThe original cook held a wire broiler a few inches above glowing coals, heat coming from below and turned frequently. The nearest equivalents are a hot grill or an oven broiler element at its highest setting, roughly 500F, with the bird on a rack close to the heat.
- The hinged broilerA "greased broiler" here is a two-sided hinged wire grid that clamps the bird so it can be flipped whole. A grill basket does the same job; without one, turn the halves with tongs.
- Ten minutes is for a squab, and only for a squabSquab weigh roughly 12 to 16 oz and cook fast. Restaurant practice serves the breast rosy, but if you want the USDA figure it is 165F in the thigh; check with a thermometer rather than trusting the clock, since fire intensity varied enormously in these kitchens.
- Quail and "any small bird"Farmed quail are widely sold and behave like a very small squab, six to eight minutes. Wild songbirds, which some period books included under "small birds," are protected in the US and Europe and are not an option.
- The hot oven finish for chickenA "hot oven" in a book of this vintage is usually reckoned at roughly 400 to 450F. The ten or twelve minutes there is what finishes cooking a chicken half through after the surface has browned over the coals; do not skip it.
- Thin creamThis is light or single cream, about 18 to 20 percent fat. Half a cup thickened with half a tablespoon of cornstarch gives a deliberately loose sauce, appropriate for an invalid's tray.
- YieldEach broiled squab is one portion. The creamed chicken, as written, makes a single small serving and is an economical use of the meat taken from the bones when making the chicken broth, as the recipe itself says.
These recipes come from the invalid-cookery tradition that ran through American household manuals from the 1870s to the First World War, when nursing the sick was often done at home and the cookbook doubled as a sickroom manual. The logic is visible in the writing: small portions, nothing fried, everything served on toast, and an explicit worry about whether "the patient can digest it." Squab, a young pigeon taken before it flies, was a common convalescent bird because the flesh is tender and needs no long cooking. The creamed chicken at the end shows the household economy underneath the medicine: the invalid gets the broth, and the meat left on the bones becomes a second meal rather than waste.