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Stewed Whole Spring Chicken
Prepare a full-grown spring chicken the same as for roasting; season inside and out with salt and pepper; stuff with whole, raw oysters and place it in a tin pail with a close-fitting cover. Set the pail in another vessel of fast boiling water and cook till the chicken is done; then place the chicken on a warm dish and make a gravy as follows: Pour the liquor in the tin pail in a saucepan, add one tablespoon of butter, one-half cup of cream or rich milk, three hard boiled eggs chopped fine, some minced herbs and one tablespoon of flour. Let all boil up; pour over the chicken and serve hot.
STEAMED CHICKEN OR FOWL-A chicken is more tender than a fowl and is to be preferred for light cooking; but a fat fowl a year or two old has a richer and finer flavor, and, if steamed properly, will be perfectly tender. Select a fowl that weighs five or more pounds, singe and wash it, draw it carefully, and wipe it dry inside and out. Rub it within and without with salt and pepper, place an onion and a bay leaf inside, and tie the fowl into shape the same as for roasting. Then flour a towel and wrap it about the fowl, pinning closely. Lay the chicken, back downward, in a steamer, and allow it to cook continuously for from two to three hours, according to its age and size. If properly steamed, it will be superior in taste to a roasted chicken. Serve with celery, oyster or parsley sauce.
CHICKEN À LA MARENGO-Make a savory sauce by melting *one-quarter cup of butter and frying in it one tablespoon of chopped onion, a small carrot, diced and a slice of turnip cut in small pieces. Stir in one-quarter cup of flour and add gradually one cup of boiling water and one and one-half cup of tomato, previously stewed and strained. Season with pepper, salt and paprika.
Cut a chicken in pieces as for frying, dredge with flour and sauté in salt pork fat. Remove from the pan, place in a saucepan and cover with the savory sauce. Allow chicken to cook in this sauce until tender. At the last moment add a cup of button mushrooms and two tablespoons of chopped olives. Arrange the pieces of chicken on the center of the platter and pour the sauce around, garnishing with triangles of toast and stuffed olives.
Three related methods for cooking a whole or cut-up bird, all of them gentle. The first is a sealed water-bath rather than a stew in the modern sense, and the vessel it calls for is the part most likely to trip up a reader.
- The tin pail is a double boilerA covered tin pail set in fast-boiling water is a bain-marie: the bird cooks in its own juices and the oyster liquor, never in water. A deep heatproof bowl or a tall stockpot with a tight lid, set on a rack in a larger pot of simmering water, does the same job. The seal matters more than the material, since all the gravy comes from what collects inside.
- "Spring chicken" and "fowl"A full-grown spring chicken of this period is a young bird, usually somewhere in the region of two to three and a half pounds, which is a small supermarket roaster today. A "fowl" is a laying hen past her prime, five pounds and up, tough and deeply flavored; the closest modern equivalent is a stewing hen from a butcher or a farm market, and a large one may well need the full three hours the recipe allows.
- Cook it to a temperature, not to a guessBecause the bird is stuffed with raw shellfish, the stuffing is the slow part. Take both the thickest part of the thigh and the center of the oyster stuffing to 165F. Expect two to two and a half hours for a 3 lb bird in a water bath, but check with a thermometer rather than the clock.
- Oysters as stuffingShucked oysters shed a great deal of liquid, which is the point here: it becomes the gravy. Drain them of grit but keep them whole, and reckon on a pint for a small bird. They will be fully cooked and firm by the time the chicken is safe, which is unavoidable in this method.
- The gravy needs a rouxA tablespoon of flour thrown into hot liquid will lump. Cook it into the tablespoon of butter first, then whisk in the strained pail liquor and the cream. A tablespoon of flour to roughly a cup and a half of liquid gives a thin pouring sauce, which is what the recipe intends; double it for anything napping.
- The floured towelIn the steamed version, the cloth wrapped around the bird keeps the skin from waterlogging and holds the shape. Use unbleached cotton or muslin, no fabric softener, and tie rather than pin it. Steamed chicken skin will never brown, so plan to serve it sauced or slip it under a hot broiler for a few minutes.
- Marengo timingsSauté the floured pieces in salt pork fat only until colored, then finish in the sauce: 25 to 35 minutes for breast and wings, 40 to 45 for legs and thighs. Add the mushrooms and olives in the last five minutes as directed, or the olives will turn the whole sauce salty.
- YieldEach of the two whole-bird methods serves four to six; the Marengo, made with a cut-up 3 1/2 lb chicken, serves four.
The Butterick Cook Book appeared in 1911 from the pattern company, aimed squarely at a middle-class household running its own kitchen, and this page shows the range that was expected of one bird: a sealed water bath, a steamer, and a French braise. Oysters as poultry stuffing looks luxurious now but was ordinary through the nineteenth century in American cities, where barreled oysters were cheap and shipped inland by rail; cookbooks of the period treat them as a pantry item rather than a delicacy. Chicken a la Marengo is traditionally traced to Napoleon's cook improvising after the battle of Marengo in 1800, a story often doubted, since the earliest printed versions postdate the battle by decades. What survives in the Butterick version is the essential shape: chicken browned in fat, then finished in a tomato sauce, with olives and mushrooms added at the end.