Chicken Broth
1 chicken 1 quart cold water 1/2 cup rice 1 cup water Salt and pepper Cut the chicken into small pieces and place it in a deep earthen dish; add the quart of water; cover it and set over a kettle of boiling water, letting it steam until the meat of the chicken has become very tender. Strain off the broth and let it stand over night. In the morning remove the fat and return the liquid to the original earthen dish. Steam the rice in the cup of water until it is soft; add it to the broth and steam the whole from one to two hours longer.
This is invalid cookery — broth built for someone who cannot chew — and the whole method is a double boiler in disguise. Read it as gentle indirect heat from start to finish.
- The hinge: never a direct boilThe earthen dish set over a kettle of boiling water is a bain-marie. The contents sit at or just below boiling rather than being agitated by a rolling boil, which is why the broth comes out clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy. A metal bowl over a pot of simmering water, or a heavy covered pot in a low oven, does the same job.
- "1 chicken"A bird in a book of this vintage was likelier to be an older fowl, with more gelatin and flavor than a modern broiler. A 4-5 lb chicken works; if you can find a stewing hen, use it and expect the tender stage to take longer.
- TimingSteamed rather than boiled, the chicken needs roughly 2 to 3 hours to reach the "very tender" point. There is no shortcut here — raising the heat defeats the purpose of the method.
- The overnight standDo this in the refrigerator, not on the counter. Broth held at room temperature for eight hours is a straightforward bacterial hazard. Chilled overnight, the fat lifts off in a solid disc, which is the entire point of the step.
- RiceHalf a cup of white rice in one cup of water gives a soft, absorbent rice that will keep swelling in the broth. Brown rice will not soften properly by this method. Expect the finished broth to thicken noticeably as it sits.
- The second steamingOne to two hours more is generous by modern taste; the rice is already cooked, so 30 to 45 minutes is enough to marry things unless you want it nearly a porridge. Longer steaming was partly about further breaking down the starch for easy digestion.
- SeasoningSalt at the end, after the fat is off and the rice is in. The rice will take up some of the salt, so judge it once everything is together.
- YieldRoughly a quart of finished broth and rice — two generous servings, or four small invalid portions. The cooked chicken meat is not used here; shred it for another dish rather than discarding it.
Chicken broth of this kind sat at the boundary between the kitchen and the sickroom, and cookbooks of the period often gave it a place in the soup chapter alongside a full sickroom or "invalid cookery" section. The elaborate care — steaming rather than boiling, straining, defatting overnight, then adding softened rice — reflects a period belief that fat and vigorous boiling made food hard on a weak stomach, and that thoroughly broken-down starch was easier to digest. The double-boiler technique also solved a practical problem in a coal or wood range, where the surface heat was hard to hold low and steady; a dish set over a kettle simply could not scorch. Rice added to broth for the sick is very old and widespread practice, and the combination survives in everything from congee to the modern instruction to eat rice and clear soup after illness.