Chicken Broth

A plain restorative broth of the kind kept on hand in a sickroom or reheated in a chafing dish at the table. Almost nothing about the method needs changing; the details that matter are the bird, the timing and where the pot spends the night.

• A fowl is not a broiler"Fowl" meant a mature laying hen past her prime — tough, well exercised, and far more flavorful than a young chicken. A supermarket stewing hen or an older free-range bird gives the same result; a standard 3 lb broiler-fryer will make a thinner broth and fall apart in under an hour.
• Time on the stove"Until meat falls from bones" is 2 to 3 hours for a stewing hen at a bare simmer, an hour or less for a young chicken. Keep it below a rolling boil the whole time or the fat emulsifies into the liquid and the broth turns cloudy.
• Cold water startThe instruction is deliberate. Beginning in cold water draws soluble protein out slowly and lets the scum rise where it can be skimmed, rather than setting it in the meat.
• Ten cupsThat is 2.5 quarts; depending on how hard it simmers it will reduce to something like 6 to 7 cups of finished broth, enough for about four generous servings or six as a first course. The recipe itself gives no yield.
• Do not cool it on the counterThe overnight stand belongs to a kitchen with an ice-box at best. Chill the strained broth quickly -- an ice bath, or shallow pans -- and refrigerate it. The fat still lifts off in a solid cap in the morning, which is the whole point of the step.
• Salt at the endSeasoning only after straining is correct here. Ten cups reducing over three hours concentrates anything added early, and this broth is meant to be mild.
• ServingBoiled rice means plain rice cooked separately and spooned into the bowl, not simmered in the broth, which would cloud it with starch. Croûtons of the period were small cubes of bread fried in butter.