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Roast Chicken
Chicken should never be cooked the same day it is killed. Wash well with cold water, then pour boiling water over it and into the cavity. Rub the latter with salt and pepper, and fill with a dressing made of bread soaked in water and squeezed out, a tablespoonful butter, a little salt, pepper and parsley. Rub the chicken well with butter. Sprinkle pepper and salt over it and dredge with flour. Lay it into a pan with a slice of pork or bacon and a pint of water. Let it simmer slowly two hours, basting and dredging frequently. Turn the chicken so each part may be equally browned. Add chopped thyme and parsley to the gravy.
Some persons think ground ginger a more delicate flavoring for the dressing than pepper.--Mrs. S. T.
A wet-roast in the old style: the bird sits in water with a piece of salt pork and cooks slowly, closer to a braise than to modern dry roasting. A few adjustments make it work in a contemporary oven.
- The hinge: liquid in the panA pint of water in the pan means the lower half of the bird steams rather than browns, which is why the recipe insists you turn it. If you want crisp skin, cut the water to about half a cup and baste from the fat that renders instead.
- "Simmer slowly" means a moderate oven"Simmer slowly" -- No temperature is given, and the recipe does not actually say oven; a pan with a pint of water could as easily have sat on the range top. If you do cook it in the oven, a moderate 325-350F approximates the intent. Two hours suits a large bird; a modern 3 1/2-4 lb chicken is done in 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours, at 165F in the thigh.
- "Never cooked the same day it is killed"Sound advice about rigor mortis, which makes freshly killed poultry tough for a day or so. Irrelevant to supermarket chicken, which has long since rested.
- Scalding with boiling waterThis was part of dressing a home-killed bird, loosening remaining pinfeathers and rinsing the cavity. Skip it; rinsing raw poultry only spreads bacteria around the sink. Pat dry instead, which also helps the skin.
- The dressingBread soaked in water and squeezed dry is a very plain panade; a few slices of stale white bread, a tablespoon of butter, salt, pepper and parsley. It is loose and moist, so it will not reach a safe temperature as fast as the meat. Bake it in a small dish alongside rather than in the cavity, or check it reads 165F.
- Slice of pork or baconSalt pork was a common fat in this kind of cookery, and streaky bacon is the nearest modern equivalent. Lay it over the breast rather than under the bird so the fat bastes downward.
- DredgingDredging with flour repeatedly during cooking builds a crust and thickens the pan liquid into gravy as it goes. Use a fine sieve and a light hand, and finish the gravy with the chopped thyme and parsley off the heat.
- YieldA whole roast chicken with dressing serves four, or six with the usual run of vegetables.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of recipes signed with initials like Mrs. S. T. — the book was a collective effort of a class of household managers writing for one another rather than a single author's system. The wet, slow, frequently basted method here belongs to hearth and early range cookery, where steady even heat was hard to hold and a pan of water protected against scorching; the constant turning and dredging is the compensation for having no thermostat. Ground ginger in poultry dressing, offered at the end as the more delicate option, is in keeping with an older English seasoning habit that leaned on warm spice where later cooks reached for black pepper.