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Planked Chicken
¼ tablespoon Duchess potatoes each, finely chopped 1 teaspoon finely chopped onion 1½ clove garlic, finely chopped 1 teaspoon lemon juice 8 mushroom caps Cream the butter, add pepper, parsley, onion, garlic, and lemon juice. Split a young chicken as for broiling, place in dripping-pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dot over with /
A plank dinner is a broiled bird finished and served on a seasoned hardwood board, with a piped potato border and a compound butter. The order of operations matters more than any single quantity here.
- The plankPlank cookery of the period used a hardwood board, oiled and heated gradually before the food touched it, since a cold or flame-scorched plank splits and chars. Note that the text as printed here directs the split bird into a dripping-pan, and no oven heat is specified.
- Split as for broilingCut through the backbone and open the bird flat, or halve it entirely. 'A young chicken' in this period usually meant a broiler of roughly 1½ to 2½ lb; neither weight, heat nor timing is given in the text, so judge by doneness rather than the clock.
- Butter quantityThe amount of butter to be creamed with the seasonings is not stated in the text as it stands. For a bird this size, 4 to 6 tablespoons of softened butter carries the parsley, onion, garlic and lemon juice comfortably.
- GarlicThe '1½ clove' reading is almost certainly garbled; treat it as somewhere between half a clove and one clove, finely minced.
- Duchess potatoesRiced potato beaten with egg yolk, butter and cream, stiff enough to hold a pastry-bag shape. Pipe it as a border around the plank once the chicken is on, then return the plank to the oven or under the broiler only long enough to colour the ridges.
- Mushroom capsBroil or sauté the caps separately in butter for 3 to 4 minutes and arrange them at the end. Raw caps set on the plank release liquid and slacken the potato border.
- DonenessTake the thigh to 165F. Broilers of this size dry out quickly past that point, and the compound butter spread over the hot bird at serving does the rest of the work.
- YieldOne split broiler with its potato and mushroom garnish serves two generously, three at a stretch. Serve directly from the plank, set on a metal or wood underliner to protect the table.
Plank cookery is generally traced into American restaurant and home cooking through fish first: planked shad along the Delaware and planked whitefish around the Great Lakes were nineteenth-century specialties, the fish nailed or set on a board and cooked before an open fire. As the fashion spread, the plank became a piece of chafing-dish-era showmanship sold as kitchen equipment, and steak, fish and chicken were all being served on it with a piped Duchess potato border to catch the juices. The seasoned butter worked here with parsley, lemon and a little onion and garlic is a variation on maitre d'hotel butter, the standard finishing sauce of the period for anything broiled.