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Baked Chickens
Dress the chickens and cut them in two, soak for half an hour in cold water, wipe perfectly dry and put in a dripping-pan, bone side down, without any water; have a hot oven, and, if the chickens are young, half an hour's cooking will be sufficient. Take out, and season with butter, salt and pepper; pack one above another as closely as possible, and place in pan over boiling water, covering them closely this keeps them moist until served-boil the giblets in a little water, and, after the chickens are taken from the dripping-pan, put into it the water in which giblets were boiled, thicken it, and add the chopped giblets. This manner of baking chickens is fully equal to broiling them. - Mrs. E. W. Herrick
A dry-roast-then-hold method that treats the oven like a broiler. Two things need attention: the oven temperature is higher than the wording suggests, and the half-hour timing was written for a much smaller bird.
- "A hot oven"In period terms roughly 400-450F. The aim is to brown and crisp the skin quickly, as broiling would, rather than to roast gently.
- "Dress the chickens"In 1880s usage this means kill, scald, pluck, singe and draw the bird, then remove the head and feet. A supermarket chicken arrives dressed; you only need to split it in half through the breast and backbone.
- Bird size and timingA "young chicken" here is a spring chicken of roughly 1.5 to 2.5 lb whole, so halves cooked through in half an hour. A modern broiler-fryer runs 3.5 to 4.5 lb, and the halves will need 40 to 50 minutes at that heat. Cook to 165F at the thickest part of the thigh, away from bone, rather than by the clock.
- The soakHalf an hour in cold water was probably meant to draw out blood, though the recipe gives no reason. It does nothing for a processed chicken, and the instruction to wipe it perfectly dry is the part that still matters -- wet skin steams instead of browning.
- Bone side down, no waterSkin side up on a rack in the pan, no liquid. Any water in the pan turns the dish into a braise and the skin stays flabby.
- The holding stepStacking the seasoned halves in a covered pan set over boiling water is a bain-marie for keeping them hot and moist. Useful if dinner is delayed, but the skin softens; if you want it crisp, season and serve straight from the oven.
- Giblet gravySimmer the neck, heart and gizzard 45 minutes to an hour; the liver only about 10 minutes or it turns bitter and grainy. For "thicken it," 1 to 2 tablespoons flour per cup of liquid, worked into the pan fat over heat before the giblet broth goes in.
- YieldThe recipe does not say how many birds are meant; each chicken split gives two halves, and half a modern bird is a generous serving.
The dish belongs to the era when a "spring chicken" was a genuine seasonal item: birds hatched in late winter and eaten at a pound or two in early summer, before they toughened into stewing fowl. Broiling was the usual treatment for such young birds, and Mrs. Herrick closes by claiming that oven-baking is "fully equal to broiling." The Dixie Cook-Book, first published in the 1880s, was assembled from contributed receipts credited by name, a common practice that gave the collection the authority of many kitchens rather than one. The giblet gravy built in the drippings reflects the ordinary economy of a household that had no reason to throw away the neck and gizzard.