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M. a. T (Boil a fowl until it will slip)
Boil a fowl until it will slip easily from the bones; let the water be reduced to about one pint in boiling; pick the meat from the bones in good sized pieces, taking out all gristle, fat, and bones; place in a wet mould; skim the fat from the liquor; a little butter; pepper and salt to the taste and one-half ounce of gelatine. When this dissolves, pour it hot over the chicken. The liquor must be seasoned pretty high, for the chicken absorbs.
A jellied or pressed chicken, set in its own reduced stock with a little added gelatine. The recipe assumes a cold larder and a cook who knows what a fowl is; both need translating.
- "A fowl" is not a broilerA nineteenth-century fowl was a mature laying hen, tough, gelatinous and full of flavour, and it wanted two to three hours of gentle simmering. A supermarket chicken of 4-5 lb reaches the falling-off-the-bone stage in about 90 minutes; a stewing hen, if you can find one, behaves more like the original.
- Reduce the liquor after cooking, not duringThe instruction to let the water fall to about one pint means the finished stock should measure roughly two cups. Cover the bird only just, then strain and boil the stock down hard once the meat is out, or you will overcook the chicken chasing an evaporation target.
- Half an ounce of gelatineThat is about 14 g, or two standard envelopes of powdered gelatine, for one pint of liquid. It sets firm enough to slice, which is the point. Bloom it in a little cold stock before stirring it into the hot liquor.
- Season past the point of comfortThis is the hinge, and the recipe says so. Cold food reads flat, and the meat drinks up salt as the jelly sets. Taste the hot liquor and take it slightly beyond what seems right warm.
- "A wet mould"Rinsing the mould in cold water leaves a film that stops the jelly gripping, so it turns out cleanly. A loaf tin works; a brief dip in hot water and an inverted plate releases it.
- Skim, then skim againFat is skimmed while hot here, but chilling the strained stock for an hour lets the rest lift off in a solid sheet. Any fat left behind sets as an unpleasant opaque layer on top of the finished mould.
- Chilling and keepingSet it in the refrigerator, not a cool room, and give it at least six hours. Because it is unpasteurised after moulding, eat it within three days and keep it cold until it goes to the table.
- YieldOne 4-5 lb bird with a pint of jelly fills a standard 8 x 4 inch loaf tin and slices into eight to ten portions, served cold with mustard, pickles or salad.
Pressed and jellied poultry of this kind was a staple of the cold table in late Victorian North America, where it did the work of a terrine without any of the French vocabulary: leftover or cheap boiling fowl, reduced stock and enough gelatine to hold a slice together for a supper, a picnic or a Sunday when the range stayed cold. Commercial sheet gelatine, available from the middle of the nineteenth century, is what makes the recipe so casual about it - an earlier cook would have had to render the setting power out of calves' feet herself, and a well-made fowl stock from an old hen would nearly have set on its own. The initials "M. A. T." are typical of The Home Cook Book, which was compiled from contributions by named and initialled subscribers and sold in aid of a Toronto hospital, and which reads throughout as a record of what particular women in particular kitchens actually cooked.