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Devilled Cold Chicken
Take the legs and wings of any cold fowl. Dress with pepper, salt, mustard, and butter; then broil.
Four lines and no quantities, which is normal for a leftovers dish that every cook of the period already knew. The whole method is: coat cold cooked joints in a sharp mustard-butter paste and put them under fierce heat until the outside blisters.
- The hinge: dark meat only, and score itThe hinge: dark meat, and score it — Legs and wings are the joints most often left over after a bird is carved, and dark meat tends to stay moister than breast under a second application of heat. Slashing each joint to the bone two or three times is not in the original, but it lets the seasoning reach inside and speeds the heat through.
- What "dress" meansThe original does not say. Working the seasonings into softened butter to make a paste and smearing it thickly into the cuts and over the skin is one reading; sprinkling the dry seasonings and dotting with butter is another, and period devils are found both ways. For four joints, roughly 3 tablespoons butter, 2 teaspoons mustard, a good deal of black pepper and a half teaspoon salt.
- The mustardIn a Virginia kitchen of this date this means English mustard powder, mixed to a paste with a little water and left ten minutes to develop its heat, or a sharp prepared mustard. Sweet yellow ballpark mustard gives an entirely different and much tamer dish.
- "Broil" is not the modern oven broiler, but it worksThe original means over live coals on a gridiron. A modern broiler element set high with the rack about 4 inches below does the same job: 4 to 6 minutes a side, turning once, until the butter is bubbling and the edges are charred in spots.
- Bring it properly hotThe chicken is already cooked, so the point is browning, not cooking through. Still, take cold meat straight from the refrigerator to at least 165F at the bone before serving.
- Room to push itPeriod devils very often carried cayenne, a spoonful of Worcestershire, or a little vinegar in the paste. The recipe as written is the plain version; any of these are within the tradition.
- Yield and servingThe legs and wings of one roast chicken feed two as a light supper or breakfast dish. Watercress, toast, or a sharp pickle suit it well.
To "devil" food is to season it hotly and grill it hard, a British usage generally traced to the late eighteenth century and originally applied almost entirely to leftovers: cold game, the carcass of last night's fowl, bones and trimmings that would otherwise be wasted. Devilled bones and devilled kidneys were staples of the club supper and the sideboard breakfast, and the technique crossed to American tables along with the rest of the Anglo-Virginian repertoire. Its appearance in Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), Marion Cabell Tyree's compilation of contributions from Virginia housekeepers, sits squarely in the book's economical strain: a household that roasted a fowl expected to eat the joints a second time, and mustard, pepper and a hot fire were the accepted way to make cold meat worth serving again. Devilled ham and devilled eggs carry the same word, even though the fierce heat of the gridiron has dropped out of it.