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CHICKEN BROTH (Cut up a young fowl and remove)
Cut up a young fowl, and remove all of the skin and fat. Wash the chicken, cut it into small pieces, crack the bones well, and place it in a kettle with two quarts of cold water. Set the kettle on the fire in a slow heat, and gradually bring the water to the boiling point. Skim carefully, and set it back where it will gently simmer for three hours, keeping the kettle tightly covered. Season with salt, strain off the broth, and serve. If sago, tapioca or rice is not objectionable to the patient, it may be added with advantage. Soak two tablespoons of the grain for one hour in cold water, drain, add it to the strained broth, and simmer slowly for twenty minutes. If the kettle is kept well covered and the cooking is as slow as it should be, the liquid will not boil away appreciably. Should the broth be needed very quickly, the rice may be boiled by itself in just enough water to keep it from browning, and both water and rice may be added to the broth, care being taken that there is not enough water with the rice to weaken the broth.
A plain simmered chicken broth from the invalid-cookery chapter, built for clarity and digestibility rather than flavour depth. Almost everything hinges on keeping the pot below a boil.
- Never let it boilOnce it reaches the boiling point, pull it back to a bare shiver — a few bubbles breaking the surface. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and albumen into the liquid and turns a clear broth cloudy, which was the whole point of straining it.
- "A young fowl"In period usage 'fowl' generally meant a mature bird for stewing or boiling, while a 'young fowl' would be a smaller, younger bird — roughly today's 3–4 lb whole chicken. A cut-up chicken or 3 lb of wings, backs and thighs works as well and is easier to crack.
- Cracking the bonesThis is not optional here. The broth gets its body and marrow flavour from split bones, so use the back of a heavy knife or a cleaver on the thighs, drumsticks and back before the meat goes in the pot.
- Cold water startTwo quarts of cold water over the raw chicken, heated slowly, draws the scum to the surface where it can be skimmed. Starting hot sets the proteins in place and you lose the chance to clarify.
- Three hours, coveredModern practice would agree: three hours at a simmer extracts plenty from chicken bones without turning the meat to cotton. Tight cover and low heat mean little reduction, so the yield is close to two quarts.
- SagoSago is palm starch in small pearls, sold in Asian and South Asian groceries; tapioca pearls substitute directly. Both were valued as bland thickeners for the sick. Soaking then simmering twenty minutes suits pearls, but modern instant tapioca needs far less.
- SaltThe recipe's only seasoning is salt, added at the end just before straining; go lightly if the broth is for someone unwell. There is no onion, carrot or herb at all.
- Yield and keepingAbout two quarts, roughly eight cups. Chill it and lift the set fat off the top before reheating; refrigerate no more than three or four days, or freeze in single portions.
Nineteenth-century household manuals commonly carried a chapter on "foods for invalids," and chicken broth was a staple of it — a period when nursing the sick at home was the household's work and diet was one of the few interventions available. The rules read strangely fussy until you see the reasoning: skin and fat removed because fat was thought to burden a weak stomach, no onion or herbs because strong flavours were held to be irritating, and rice, sago or tapioca offered as the only concession to substance. The insistence on slow heat and a tight lid suits cooking on a coal or wood range, where a pot could be moved to the cooler back of the stove to hold a simmer for hours. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued this cook book as part of a broad line of domestic guides aimed at the same readership that bought its sewing patterns.