Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Chicken Loaf
Chicken Loaf
Mrs. W. H. Low.
Take two chickens, boil them in as little water as possible until the meat will drop from the bones; cut it with a knife and fork, then put it back into the kettle; put in plenty of butter, pepper and salt; heat it thoroughly; boil an egg hard and slice it and place it in the bottom of a dish; pour it in hot, place a weight upon it, and put it away to cool; it will come out in form.
This is pressed chicken, and it works only if the cooking liquid is concentrated enough to set the loaf. Everything else is seasoning.
- The hinge: keep the broth scant"As little water as possible" is the whole method — the collagen from two whole birds, simmered in barely enough liquid to cover, gives a broth gelatinous enough to bind the meat when chilled. If you drown the chickens, reduce the liquid hard before returning the meat, or the loaf will crumble when sliced.
- Two chickensMarket chickens of the period generally ran smaller than modern birds, so two would give perhaps 1 1/2 to 2 lb of picked meat. One 4 to 5 lb bird will do, though you lose some of the gelatin that came from the extra frame.
- Simmer, do not boil"Boil them" means a bare simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours until the meat leaves the bone. A hard boil toughens the breast long before the legs give way.
- Cut with a knife and forkThis is a deliberate instruction, not a quaint one — it gives shreds and chunks rather than the paste a food processor produces. Use the skin too, chopped fine, or discard it if you want a leaner loaf.
- "Plenty of butter"Unquantified. Two to three tablespoons for this volume of meat is a reasonable modern reading and keeps the loaf from tasting dry; much more and the fat may separate into a layer at the edge as it cools.
- The dish and the weightAny straight-sided bowl, loaf pan or terrine works. Lay the sliced hard-boiled egg in the bottom so it becomes the top when turned out, press with a plate and a couple of tins, and expect the loaf to shrink noticeably as the liquid is forced out.
- Cooling"Put it away to cool" meant a cold pantry. Cool it at room temperature only until it stops steaming, then refrigerate under weight for at least 6 hours or overnight. Cooked chicken and egg held for hours in a warm kitchen is the one genuine risk in this recipe.
- Yield and servingAbout 8 to 10 slices from two small birds. Serve cold, sliced thin, with mustard or pickles; it is sandwich meat and buffet food, not a hot main course.
Pressed meats like this were a standard answer to the problem of using a boiled fowl cold, and versions turn up under "chicken loaf," "pressed chicken," "jellied chicken" and "chicken cheese" in nineteenth-century American community cookbooks. The technique is older than the name: the natural gelatin in a long-simmered bird sets the meat firm enough to slice, which meant a household could turn one day's boiled chicken into several days of cold luncheon and sandwiches without buying gelatin — commercial gelatin was available by this date, but making jelly stock at home was laborious, and packaged granules came later. The Home Cook Book was compiled from contributions by named local women — Mrs. W. H. Low here — and the loose measurements ("plenty of butter," "as little water as possible") are typical of recipes set down by cooks who knew them by hand.