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To Boil Chicken
Never boil the same day the chicken is killed. Soak them overnight in weak salt and water. Place in a kettle of water, with a handful of rice and a little milk to make the chicken white. Simmer slowly two or three hours, removing the scum that rises when the chicken first begins to boil. Keep under the water, with an inverted deep plate. Just before taking off the fire, add salt to the taste. Lay on a hot dish near the fire. Skim off the fat from the top of the liquor, strain it and add chopped celery, parsley and thyme, drawn butter, a little pepper and salt, or, if preferred, six hard-boiled eggs chopped fine.--Mrs. S. T.
A plain boiled fowl with a sauce built from its own broth. The two things worth attending to are the cooking time, which is written for a bird far older than anything sold today, and the overnight soak, which needs refrigeration.
- Two or three hours is too longThe instruction assumes a mature laying hen or an old rooster, all connective tissue and worked muscle. A modern 3-4 lb broiler is done in 50 to 75 minutes at a bare simmer, tested at 165F in the thigh. Held for three hours it shreds into cotton and the meat goes dry even in liquid.
- "Never boil the same day the chicken is killed"This is about rigor mortis: a freshly killed bird cooks up tough and was rested a day before cooking. Rigor passes comparatively quickly in chilled poultry, and commercially processed chicken has already rested before it reaches you, so the rule is satisfied before you buy it.
- The overnight soakWeak salt and water is a light brine and it does improve the seasoning and moisture. Do it in the refrigerator, not on the counter — a night at room temperature in dilute brine is exactly the condition poultry pathogens like.
- Rice and milkThe recipe gives these as a way to keep the flesh pale rather than grey-brown; a handful of rice is a loose measure, somewhere around a quarter to a half cup. The milk may curdle into soft flecks; strain the broth as directed and it disappears.
- The inverted plateA heavy heatproof plate laid face-down on the bird keeps it submerged so it poaches evenly. Any small plate that fits inside the pot works, or a round of parchment weighted with a saucer.
- Simmer, do not boilDespite the title, keep the water at a lazy tremble, around 180-190F. A rolling boil tears the skin, clouds the broth and toughens the breast well before the legs are done.
- Salt at the endThe broth reduces as it cooks and salt added early concentrates with it. The direction to season just before taking it off the fire is sound, and it applies to the sauce as well.
- Drawn butterIn this period drawn butter means a simple butter sauce — butter melted with a little flour and thinned with the cooking liquor, roughly 2 tablespoons each of butter and flour to a cup of broth. It is not clarified butter.
- YieldA single fowl with sauce serves four to six. The strained liquor left over is good chicken stock; chill it and lift off the fat.
Boiled fowl was the standard fate of a hen past her laying years, and nineteenth-century cookbooks are often said to treat it as a distinct dish from roast chicken rather than a lesser version of it. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (Marion Cabell Tyree, 1878) is a compilation of contributed receipts, and the initialled attribution — "Mrs. S. T." — is typical of the book's method: hundreds of Virginia housekeepers sending in what they actually did. The rice-and-milk trick for whiteness reflects a real period preference for pale boiled poultry, served with a white or butter sauce; the alternative finish of six chopped hard-boiled eggs is a version of the egg sauce long served with boiled fowl and with salt fish in both British and American cooking. Nothing here is wasted: the bird gives the broth, the broth gives the sauce, and the herbs are whatever the garden had.