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Pressed Chicken
Clean and singe the chicken, and cut it in pieces as for a fricassee. Place it in a kettle with a little water, cover closely, and boil very gently until the meat will fall from the bones. Lift the meat from the kettle with a skimmer, and, separating the white meat from the dark, scrape all the meat from the bones, leaving out the skin pieces. Season with salt and pepper. Place the meat in the dish it is to be pressed in, laying the white and dark meat in alternate layers, as far as possible, and adding from time to time a little of the broth from the kettle, to moisten all well. When all the meat is in the dish lay a plate on top of it, place a heavy weight upon the plate, and set away in a cool place. This makes a pretty dish for luncheon, the meat being sliced for serving and garnished with parsley.
CAPON-Capons are easily distinguishable in the markets because of head, tail and wing feathers being left intact. They are large and plump having been especially fatted for the table. They bring high prices and are considered luxuries. They are prepared for cooking the same as chickens. If stuffed, choose a delicate flavoring as oysters or chestnuts.
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A cooked, jellied loaf that sets on the strength of its own broth. Everything depends on getting enough gelatin out of the bird and into the mold.
- The hinge: concentrated brothThe loaf holds together because collagen from the bones and joints sets as it chills. Cook the bird in only enough water to cover, then reduce the strained broth hard before spooning it over the meat — thin, watery broth will not gel, and the loaf will crumble under the knife.
- Choose an older birdA modern 6-week broiler has little connective tissue. A stewing hen, a fowl, or bone-in thighs and drumsticks with the backs and wings will give a far firmer set. Failing that, soften a tablespoon of powdered gelatin in the reduced broth.
- "Cut as for a fricassee"Joint the bird into eight to ten pieces: two drumsticks, two thighs, two wings, the breast split and halved, plus the back and neck for the pot.
- Boil very gentlyRead this as a bare simmer with the lid on, the surface barely moving; the book gives no temperature, but somewhere just below a simmer (roughly 180-190F) is the intent. A 4-5 lb fowl needs 2 to 3 hours before the meat slips from the bone; a supermarket chicken about 1 1/4 hours.
- "A cool place" means the refrigeratorGet the assembled loaf below 40F promptly and keep it there, not in a pantry or cellar. Chilling 8 hours or overnight under weight gives clean slices. Eat within three days.
- Mold and weightA loaf pan lined with plastic wrap or parchment unmolds cleanly. A plate cut to fit inside the rim with two or three pounds on top — a couple of large cans, or a foil-wrapped brick — is enough; more squeezes out the broth that binds it.
- SeasoningSeason the meat more assertively than seems right while warm. Cold jellied dishes taste flat, and the salt cannot be corrected once the loaf is set.
- YieldOne 4-5 lb fowl gives about 8 to 10 luncheon slices; the picked meat will part-fill a 9x5-inch loaf pan, so a smaller pan or terrine packs it more tightly. Serve cold with mustard or a sharp pickle alongside the parsley.
- The capon noteThe paragraph tacked on the end is a market note, not part of the recipe. Capons — castrated cockerels, fattened for size — are a specialty butcher item now; a 5-6 lb roasting chicken stands in for one.
Pressed chicken belongs to a large family of nineteenth-century cold jellied meats — pressed veal, head cheese — that let a household turn a tough or elderly bird into a sliceable dish and stretch it across several cold meals. The technique needs no gelatin package and no aspic mold, only the natural collagen in the joints of a working hen, which is why it appears throughout American and English cookery well before commercial gelatin became cheap. Its place here in the Butterick book, framed as "a pretty dish for luncheon" with parsley, reflects the period's fondness for cold composed dishes at the lighter midday meal, when a housewife could prepare the loaf the day before and produce it without further cooking. The appended note on capons is a reminder of how differently poultry reached the buyer then: birds were identified at market by the feathers deliberately left on head, tail and wings, a trade convention often read as a way for a shopper to verify what she was paying a luxury price for.