Chicken Soup

A fireless-cooker recipe: the pot is brought to a boil on the stove, then sealed in an insulated box to coast on its own stored heat. The method translates directly to a slow cooker or a low oven, with one important difference in how the heat is managed.

• The fireless cookerA wooden or metal chest packed with hay, felt or asbestos, sometimes with a preheated soapstone disc, that held a boiling pot near temperature for hours. It has no heat source of its own, so everything depends on going in at a hard boil in a tightly covered kettle.
• Substitute controlled heatModern practice is to keep the pot at a measurable temperature rather than trust residual heat. After the twenty-minute boil, transfer to a slow cooker on low or a 200-225F oven for four to five hours, with the liquid at a bare shiver. An untended insulated box can drift down through the range where bacteria multiply.
• Twenty minutes is not cooking timeThe initial boil exists to charge the pot with heat, not to cook the bird. Check the thigh reads 165F before you take the chicken out for salad or croquettes; a whole fowl usually needs the full long spell to get there and to give up its gelatin.
• Clean and dress the chickenAt the time this meant plucking, singeing the pinfeathers and drawing the bird. A supermarket chicken of 4 to 5 lb needs only rinsing and removal of the giblet packet. An older stewing hen makes far better broth if you can find one.
• The stray corn and milkThe line "1 can corn 1 quart milk" is a fragment with no instructions attached, most likely the start of a corn soup built on this stock. Read as a corn chowder, it would mean adding a can of corn and a quart of milk to the strained, degreased broth and heating without boiling, but the original gives no quantities of stock or thickening.
• Cooling in the liquorLetting the bird cool in its broth keeps the breast moist and is worth doing, but do it in the refrigerator once the pot has stopped steaming rather than overnight on the counter. The chilled fat lifts off in a sheet the next morning.
• SeasoningTwo teaspoons of salt to six cups is a moderate amount; taste and adjust once the chicken is removed. Celery leaves alone are a thin aromatic base by current standards, and an onion, a carrot and a few peppercorns cost nothing.
• YieldSix cups of water and a whole chicken give roughly a quart and a half of finished broth after skimming, four to six servings as a first course, plus enough cooked meat for a salad for four.