Home › Chicken Recipes › Spread Eagle
Spread Eagle
Salt, pepper, and made mustard to taste 1 gill (1/2 cup) chopped cooked ham 1 tablespoonful chopped parsley Tomato sauce Watercress 2 ozs. (4 tablespoonfuls) butter or drippings Singe and draw the chicken and split it down the back; leave the wings on, but remove the breastbone. Season well inside with salt, pepper, and made mustard. Lay the bird in a well-buttered baking tin. Sprinkle with the ham and the parsley, brush with the melted butter or drippings and cook it in a moderate oven for twenty-five minutes, keeping it well basted while cooking. Pour some hot tomato sauce on to a hot platter, lay the chicken on it, and garnish the top and the bottom of the dish with watercress. 43 ( Serve for breakfast or luncheon.
A squab may be cooked in the same way. Split a nice squab up the back, flatten it a little with a knife, and truss the wings each side of the breast.
Put a skewer through to keep it flat. Grill it over a clear fire for five minutes, turning once.
Then place it in a buttered tin, covering it with buttered bread crumbs; cook in a hot oven for ten minutes, place on a piece of toast after removing the skewer, and pour over some nice thick brown gravy.
Garnish with watercress.
A spatchcocked bird under ham and parsley, laid on tomato sauce. The ingredient list omits the chicken itself, and the cooking time only makes sense for a very small one.
- The birdTwenty-five minutes implies a spring chicken or poussin of about 1 to 1 1/2 lb, not a modern 4 lb roaster. A supermarket chicken split flat will need roughly 40 to 50 minutes, and the thickest part of the thigh must read 165F.
- Moderate oven350F. For a flattened bird 425F gives better skin and a shorter time, but then the ham and crumbs want watching so they do not scorch.
- A gillHalf a cup, as the recipe helpfully glosses. Chopped cooked ham here is a seasoning layer, so mince it fine rather than dicing.
- Made mustardPrepared mustard from the jar, not dry powder. English or Dijon both suit; if using powder, mix it with a little water first and let it stand ten minutes for the heat to develop.
- Splitting it down the backThis is spatchcocking. Cut either side of the backbone with shears, open the bird out, press down hard on the breast to crack it flat, and pull out the breastbone and keel. Even thickness is the whole point of the method.
- DrippingsBeef or bacon fat, kept from earlier roasting. Butter is the easier choice; clarified butter or a butter and oil mix will not brown as fast at higher heat.
- BastingWorth doing here because the ham and parsley layer dries out quickly. Every ten minutes is enough, and spoon the pan fat back over rather than opening the door constantly.
- SquabFarmed young pigeon, usually around 12 oz to 1 lb, and often sold frozen. It is dark meat and is commonly served pink; five minutes over the fire and ten in a hot oven, around 425F, is a reasonable treatment for one that size.
- YieldOne small bird serves one or two at breakfast or lunch; a full-sized chicken done this way serves three to four.
"Spread eagle" describes the shape rather than the seasoning: a bird split up the back, opened out, and flattened so that it cooks quickly and evenly, wings spread either side. The technique is old and appears under several names, spatchcock in English and a la crapaudine in French, and it belongs to an era of small spring chickens rather than large roasting birds. The instruction to serve it for breakfast or luncheon fits the tradition of the substantial British breakfast, where a grilled or devilled bird with mustard could sit alongside kidneys and kedgeree. Squab appears as the alternative because pigeon was still a common market bird in the early twentieth century, cheap and quick to cook; it has since become an expensive specialty item. "Made mustard" of this sort is associated with devilled dishes, and tomato sauce and watercress were common garnishes of the period.