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Baked Chicken
Anonymous.
Cut the fowls open and lay them flat in a pan, breaking down the breast and the back bones; dredge with flour and season well with salt and pepper, with bits of butter; put in a very hot oven until done, basting frequently with melted butter; or when half done take out the chicken and finish by broiling it upon a gridiron over bright coals; pour over it melted butter and the juices in the pan in which it was baked.
This is spatchcocked chicken by another name, and the method holds up well. The only real gaps are the oven temperature and a doneness cue.
- "Cut the fowls open and lay them flat"Cut down either side of the backbone or straight through the breastbone, then press the bird flat, cracking the ribs and the keel so it lies in full contact with the pan. Flattening is what makes the whole thing cook evenly, and it is the one step worth doing carefully.
- "A very hot oven"Nineteenth-century ovens had no thermometers, and modern equivalences for "very hot" are approximate; something in the region of 450-475F is the usual reading. At that heat a 3-4 lb flattened bird takes roughly 40-50 minutes; an older, tougher fowl of the sort the writer may have had in mind would take longer.
- DonenessThe original offers no test at all. Go by 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, away from the bone, and let it rest 10 minutes before carving.
- Dredging with flourThe flour is there to brown and to give the basting butter something to cling to. Pat the skin dry first or it will clump; a light dusting is enough, and shake off the excess.
- BastingFrequent basting with melted butter was standard when ovens were dry and uneven. It does little for crispness in a modern oven and opening the door repeatedly costs you heat, so baste two or three times at most.
- The gridiron finishThe alternative ending is a live-fire finish: roast until about half done, then transfer to a gridiron over hot coals (the recipe does not say which side down). Expect flare-ups from the rendered butter, and keep a cooler zone to move the bird to.
- The pan sauceThe melted butter poured over at the end, mixed with the pan juices, is the whole sauce. Tip the fat and juices into a small pan, scrape up the browned flour with a spoonful of water or stock, and pour it over the carved bird.
- YieldOne flattened 3-4 lb chicken serves three to four. The recipe says "fowls," plural, which suits two birds in a large roasting pan or a sheet pan with a rim.
The technique here has been called spatchcocking since at least the eighteenth century, a term generally traced to Ireland and often explained as a contraction of "dispatch cock" - a bird killed and split for quick cooking. The Home Cook Book, compiled in Toronto in the 1870s from contributions by local women and sold for charity, is full of these unsigned, telegraphic entries, and a recipe of this kind would sit comfortably among them; the split-and-flatten method was practical in a kitchen where a whole roasting fowl over a slow fire tied up the range for hours. The double ending - finish in the oven, or pull it out and lay it on a gridiron over coals - is a fair picture of a period kitchen still working with both a stove and live embers.