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Broiled Chicken
Clean and singe the chickens, picking out all pin-feathers. Split each chicken down the back, and wipe with a damp towel. Even when you are quite certain the chickens are tender, it is wise to steam them before broiling. This is done thus: Set the dripping-pan in the oven, and nearly fill it with boiling water. Place two sticks across the pan, extending them from side to side, and upon them lay the chicken. Invert a tin pan over it, and, shutting the oven door let the chicken steam for thirty minutes. This process relaxes the muscles and renders the joints supple, besides preserving the juices that would be lost in parboiling. Transfer the chicken from this vapor bath to a wire broiler, and turn the inside of the chicken to the fire first. Cover the broiler with a tin pan, and broil until the fowl is tender and brown, turning it frequently and being careful the fire is not too hot. The chicken will finish cooking in twenty minutes or less if small. Lay it on a warmed platter, spread it with butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve.
The whole point of this method is the pre-steam, which does the work a slow fire once did; the actual broiling is only browning and finishing. Read the steaming step as the main cooking stage and everything else falls into place.
- The birdA "broiler" in this period generally meant a young chicken of roughly 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 lb, split flat. A modern equivalent is a small spatchcocked chicken or two halves of a 3 lb bird; a supermarket 5 lb roaster is too thick for this treatment.
- Broiler means an open fireThe wire broiler was held over coals or set before the open grate of a range. Use an overhead oven broiler element, a gas grill, or a stovetop grill pan; "the inside of the chicken to the fire first" means the cut, bony side faces the heat at the start.
- The improvised steam ovenA rack set inside a roasting pan of boiling water gives the same result as the two sticks. Set the oven at about 350F, keep the water simmering, and cover the bird with an inverted metal pan or a tented sheet of foil so it steams rather than roasts.
- The tin pan on the broilerInverting a pan over the chicken while broiling traps heat and reflects it back onto the top surface, cooking the bird through without scorching. Foil laid loosely over the top does the same job.
- "Fire not too hot"Position the bird 6 to 8 inches from the element, not the usual 3 to 4. Skin over an open flame at close range will blacken well before the thigh joints are done.
- DonenessTimings for split chicken vary too much to trust. Go by an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh, away from bone: 165F, and the juices should run clear.
- FinishingSpreading soft butter over the hot bird and seasoning at the table is the whole sauce. Salt and pepper the chicken before broiling as well, or the seasoning sits only on the surface.
- YieldTwo split broiler chickens of this size serve four; one 3 lb bird, halved, serves two generously.
Broiled chicken was a restaurant and hotel staple of the late nineteenth century, when "spring chicken" meant a genuinely young bird available only for part of the year and priced accordingly. The steaming step here is a piece of practical scepticism about the market: cooks knew that a bird sold as tender might be nothing of the kind, and parboiling was the usual insurance, at the cost of washing the flavour into the water. Steaming over a dripping-pan kept the juices in the bird. The Butterick books were published by the pattern company for a readership of home sewers and housekeepers, and the tone shows it: the method is explained in enough detail to be followed by someone who has never seen it done, using pans they already own.