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Roast Boned Chicken
Bone according to direction for boning chicken. Stuff until plump with force meat, sew, press body into natural shape, truss, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and follow directions for Roast Chicken, allowing twenty minutes for each pound.
A short cross-reference recipe of the kind common in early twentieth-century books: it assumes you already know how to bone a bird and make a forcemeat, and only tells you what changes. The two things worth fixing are the timing and the doneness test.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockTwenty minutes per pound is only a rough guide. Roast until the thickest part of the meat and the centre of the stuffing both read 165F. A 4 lb boned, stuffed chicken usually takes about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours.
- ForcemeatIn period usage this often means a fine paste of ground veal or pork with soaked breadcrumbs, egg, and seasoning rather than a bready American stuffing, though the term was applied loosely. Sausage meat loosened with breadcrumbs and an egg gives a similar effect and slices cleanly.
- Do not overstuff"Until plump" is optimistic. The forcemeat expands as the egg sets, and a tightly packed bird splits its seams; fill to about three-quarters and let the shape come from the trussing.
- Sewing and trussingUse a trussing needle and cotton butcher's twine, stitching the back seam first, then shaping the body over the stuffing before tying.
- Dredging with flourA light dusting of flour over the fat was the standard method for browning before basting. It still works, but wipe the skin dry first or the flour goes pasty rather than crisp.
- Resting and carvingRest 15 to 20 minutes before cutting, which is what makes a boned bird worth the labour: it carves in clean rounds of meat and forcemeat straight across. A 4 lb bird serves six generously.
Boning a bird whole, stuffing it, and re-forming it into its own shape is a French kitchen exercise (volaille désossée, and its grander relatives the galantine and ballotine) that migrated into American household books as a mark of accomplishment rather than economy. Lowney's Cook Book, published by the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company in 1907, was a full general cookbook underwritten by a candy manufacturer, and it expected a cook to work through cross-references: boning is taught once, roasting is taught once, and this page simply joins them. The appeal was practical as well as showy. A boned roast carves into even slices with no bones to negotiate, which suited the period's fashion for serving cold sliced meats at suppers and buffets, where a galantine of chicken pressed and glazed was standard company fare.