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Jellied Chicken
Dress, clean, and cut up a four-pound fowl. Put in a stewpan with two slices onion, cover with boiling water, and cook slowly until meat falls from bones.
When half cooked, add one-half tablespoon salt. Remove chicken; reduce stock to three-quarters cup, strain, and skim off fat. Decorate bottom of a mold with parsley, and slices of hardboiled eggs. Pack in meat freed from skin and bone and sprinkled with salt and pepper. Pour on stock and place mold under heavy weight. Keep in a cold place until firm. In summer it is necessary to add one teaspoon dissolved granulated gelatine to stock.
A pressed chicken loaf that sets on its own collagen, with gelatine only as a summer insurance policy. The whole thing hinges on reducing the stock hard enough that it gels without help.
- "A four-pound fowl"A fowl is a mature stewing hen, not a broiler — tougher, fattier, and far richer in collagen, which is what makes this set. Supermarket chicken will work but yields a weaker jelly; look for a stewing hen if you can, and expect to lean on the gelatine either way.
- Cook time"Until meat falls from bones" means 2 to 3 hours at a bare simmer for a stewing hen, closer to 1½ for a modern roasting chicken. Keep it just trembling; a rolling boil clouds the stock and shreds the meat too fine to pack.
- Reducing to three-quarters cupThis is the step that matters. From a full pot of broth you are boiling down to about 6 fl oz — a syrupy, intensely salty glaze. Under-reduce and the loaf will not hold a slice.
- The gelatineOne teaspoon of granulated gelatine is a little under half a modern envelope (about 2¼ teaspoons), but in only three-quarters cup of stock that is already about the standard gelling ratio, on top of whatever set the reduced stock provides on its own. Soften it in a little cold water before stirring it into the hot stock; add more only if a modern bird has given you a stock that stays slack when chilled.
- The mold and the weightA loaf pan lined with plastic wrap unmolds far more kindly than a bare tin. For the weight, a second pan set on top with a few cans in it is plenty; the point is to press out air pockets so the slices hold together.
- "Keep in a cold place until firm"In the period that meant an icebox or a cold cellar. Refrigerate at 40F or below, and give it at least 6 hours — overnight is better. Cooked chicken in jelly is a good medium for bacteria, so chill it promptly and eat it within three days.
- The decorationParsley and egg slices go face-down in the bottom of the mold because that becomes the top when turned out. Press them flat and spoon a little stock over them before packing meat on top, or they shift as you pack.
- Yield and servingA 4 lb bird makes about six generous slices. Serve cold with mayonnaise or a sharp mustard, a salad, and bread — it is a luncheon or supper dish, not a hot course.
Jellied or "pressed" chicken belongs to the cold-table cookery that filled Victorian and Edwardian luncheon menus: a dish made a day ahead, sliced from a mold, and served without reheating — useful in a household with no reliable way to keep food hot and only an icebox to keep it cold. It also solves the problem of the old laying hen, too tough to roast but full of the connective tissue that turns a long simmer into a stock stiff enough to set on its own. The instruction to add gelatine "in summer" is a small record of the period's technology: packaged granulated gelatine had become cheap and widely sold by the 1890s, but a warm larder still defeated a natural jelly, and cooks hedged accordingly. Household cookery books favored such dishes precisely because they could be made in advance and looked far more accomplished than the labor involved.