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To Broil a Chicken
Singe, wipe and with a sharp-pointed knife, beginning at back of neck, make a cut through backbone the entire length of bird. Lay open the bird and remove contents from inside. Cut out rib bones on either side of backbone, remove from breastbone and cut through tendons at joints.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and place in a well-greased broiler. Broil twenty minutes over a clear fire, watching carefully and turning broiler so that all parts may be equally browned. The flesh side must be exposed to the fire the greater part of the time as the skin side will brown quickly. Remove to a hot platter, spread with soft butter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Chickens are so apt to burn while broiling that many prefer to partially cook them in the oven. Place chicken in dripping-pan, skin side down, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dot over with butter or butter substitute, and bake 15 minutes in hot oven. Then broil to finish cooking.
A spatchcocked broiler, written for a hinged wire broiler held over coals. The method translates cleanly to a modern grill or oven broiler, but the timing and the doneness test need updating.
- Twenty minutes is not enoughA whole split bird over a modern fire will not reach a safe 165F in the breast in twenty minutes unless it is a very small spring chicken of 1.5-2 lb. Reckon on 30-45 minutes for a 3-4 lb bird, and check the thickest part of the thigh with a thermometer rather than by the clock.
- "A clear fire"Coals burned down to grey ash with no flame, the equivalent of medium-high indirect-to-direct heat. On a gas grill, one burner lit and the bird over the unlit side for most of the cooking, finishing over the flame.
- "Hot oven"For the par-baking step, conventionally rendered as somewhere around 400-450F. Fifteen minutes there and then a finish under the broiler or over coals is the more reliable route and still the one worth taking.
- The wire broilerThe hinged double-sided rack held the flattened bird flat and let you flip the whole thing at once. A grill basket does the same job; failing that, weight the bird under a foil-wrapped brick or heavy pan so the flesh side keeps contact.
- Splitting the birdThis is spatchcocking, cut through the back rather than the breast. Poultry shears do the job faster than the sharp-pointed knife, and freeing the breastbone (as the recipe's "remove from breastbone" seems to intend) lets the bird lie flatter.
- Flesh side down firstThe instruction that matters. Skin renders and colours fast and will char long before the interior is done, so give the cut side the greater share of direct heat and finish skin-down only long enough to crisp.
- "Butter substitute"Period shorthand for oleomargarine or a lard-based compound, a wartime and economy note. Butter is the intended article.
- YieldOne 3-4 lb bird serves three to four. The recipe states no yield, but the birds sold as broilers at the time were smaller, so two portions is the likelier assumption.
Broiling was the standard treatment for a young chicken before it was old enough to roast well; American poultry sellers distinguished broilers, fryers and roasters roughly by weight and age, a broiler being a bird of a couple of pounds killed young, though formal grading standards came later. The hinged wire broiler, a long-handled double grid, was a fixture of the coal range and the open hearth alike, and the note that "many prefer to partially cook them in the oven" reflects cooks with a serviceable oven hedging against the scorching that open-fire broiling invited. The mention of a butter substitute alongside butter points to the era when oleomargarine was common enough to name in print. The recipe spends most of its length on butchery and comparatively little on the fire.