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Jellied Chicken
4 lb. fowl boiling water 1 teaspoon salt salt and pepper 2 teaspoons gelatine 1/4 cup cold water Dress, clean and cut up fowl. Place in stew pan with boiling water and cook slowly until meat falls from bone. When one-half done, salt. Remove chicken, pick meat from bone and skin, sprinkle with salt and pepper and pack into buttered mold. Reduce the stock to one cup; soften gelatine in cold water, then dissolve in hot stock strained and skimmed of fat. Pour over meat in mold, keep in cold place until firm. Serves 6.
A straightforward chicken aspic built on the fowl's own stock, with a little gelatine as insurance. The whole dish depends on reducing the cooking liquid hard enough to concentrate it.
- The hinge: reduce properlyOne cup of stock from a 4 lb fowl means serious reduction, and that is what carries the flavour. Strain it, chill it briefly to lift the fat, then boil it down uncovered rather than adding gelatine to weak broth.
- "Fowl" is not a broilerIn older cookbooks a fowl was a mature laying hen, tough and richly gelatinous. Supermarket chickens of the same weight cook in well under an hour and give thinner stock; a stewing hen from a butcher or halal market is the closer match. If using a standard roaster, add a few wings or backs for body.
- Cooking timeAn old fowl needs 2 to 3 hours at a bare simmer for the meat to fall from the bone. A modern bird will be there in 60 to 90 minutes. Keep the water at a lazy tremble, not a rolling boil, or the meat shreds dry.
- Gelatine measurementTwo teaspoons of granulated gelatine is a little under a standard 1/4 oz envelope (about 2 1/4 teaspoons), enough to set one cup of well-reduced stock firmly. If the stock jellies on its own when chilled, halve the gelatine.
- "Dress and clean"This assumed a bird arriving with pinfeathers and innards. Today it means removing the giblets and any kidneys in the cavity, and trimming loose fat.
- Buttered moldA loaf pan works; butter it thinly and cold, or line it with plastic wrap for a clean turn-out. Press the meat down firmly so the set slice holds together.
- "Cold place" means the refrigeratorAllow at least 4 hours and preferably overnight. Because nothing is reheated after setting, keep it refrigerated until service and return leftovers promptly.
- ServingServes 6 as written, sliced about half an inch thick onto lettuce with mayonnaise or a mustard dressing. It slices best straight from the cold.