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Country Baked Spring Chicken
2 SPRING CHICKENS 2 TABLESPOONS BACON FAT 2 TABLESPOONS BUTTER 1/2 CUP HOT WATER I TABLESPOON LEMON JUICE OR VINEGAR I TEASPOON SALT 1/4 TEASPOON PEPPER I TEASPOON PAPRIKA I CUP HOT MILK 1/2 TABLESPOONS FLOUR 1/2 CUP CREAM OR EVAPORATED MILK Cut each chicken in quarters if small, and in 6 pieces if larger. Pack pieces close together in well buttered pan, and place pan in hot oven 5-8 minutes, then reduce heat to medium. Mix fat, butter, hot water and seasonings, add to pan and baste every 10 minutes being careful chicken does not get too brown or too dry. Add a little of the hot milk if necessary to keep all moist. Should be done in 1/2 hour after basting begins. Add hot milk to pan. Work flour smooth with a little cream, making sure there are no lumps, and add remaining cream; pour mixture here and there into pan wherever there is an opening between pieces of chicken. Shake gently and constantly to mix, while gravy is thickening. When all is ready, baste each piece of chicken with gravy and present the pan full of chicken as is. This is a good method for roasting any meat in one of those folding reflector ovens that are set up before the campfire and bake by reflected heat. Every stage of the cooking goes on in plain sight and basting is done by simply reaching in with a long handled spoon.
A one-pan roast chicken with the gravy built around the pieces rather than in a separate pot. Written for a reflector oven at a campfire, it works unchanged in a home oven or a covered grill.
- Spring chickenA spring chicken was a young bird, generally reckoned at something like 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 lb, roughly in the range of a small broiler today (a poussin is usually smaller still). Two of them quartered feeds four; if you substitute one modern 4 lb chicken, cut it into eight pieces and expect the cooking to run longer.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe gives no numbers. On the usual older scales a "hot oven" is somewhere around 400-450F and "medium" around 350-375F. The high start appears intended to set and colour the skin before the basting liquid goes in.
- Timing and donenessHalf an hour after basting begins is realistic only for genuinely small birds. Judge by an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh, away from bone: 165F. Modern supermarket chicken is bigger than what this recipe assumed.
- The flour quantityThe flour as printed reads as a fraction alone, which is out of proportion to a cup of milk plus half a cup of cream. Between 1 1/2 and 2 tablespoons gives a gravy of pouring consistency; use the larger amount if you want it to cling.
- Slaking the flourThis is the hinge. Work the flour to a smooth paste with a little cold cream first, then loosen with the rest before it goes anywhere near the hot pan. Flour dropped into hot liquid in a shallow pan you cannot whisk will lump immediately.
- Pouring and shakingThe thickened liquid is trickled into the gaps between pieces so the browned skin stays exposed. Shaking the pan takes the place of stirring; a wide, shallow roasting pan with a rim you can grip makes this practical.
- Bacon fatTwo tablespoons of bacon fat is doing flavour work as much as anything. Rendered bacon drippings are worth saving for it, but a neutral oil plus the butter will roast the chicken perfectly well, just more plainly.
- Evaporated milkPresumably offered as the keeping-quality alternative to cream, which would have mattered at a campsite. Evaporated milk gives a thinner, faintly caramelised gravy; heavy cream gives a richer one. Both will thicken with the flour, though not identically.
Reflector ovens, tin boxes open on one side and set facing a fire, were standard camp equipment from the nineteenth century well into the mid-twentieth, and outdoor cookery books gave them serious attention because they let a camp cook bake and roast with nothing but a good bed of coals. The author's closing remarks are the real point of the entry: with no door and no thermometer, the cook works entirely by eye, which is why the instructions dwell on colour and moisture rather than clock and dial. "Spring chicken" was a seasonal term before year-round poultry farming, meaning a bird hatched that spring and eaten young in early summer, tender enough to roast quickly rather than needing the long stewing an older hen demanded.