Chicken Stew
Stewing, when properly done, is the most perfect method of cooking chickens that have reached a greater age than one year, and although, as ordinarily served, it is 'neither toothsome nor inviting, yet when prepared according to the following recipe it makes as delicious a dish as desired: Before placing in the pot to stew, cut a chicken Separate the joints in pieces suitable for serving at table. neatly and divide the breast into three or four compact pieces. Lay the gizzard, heart and wings, and legs at the bottom of the pot, then put in the neck and bony pieces, reserving the second joints and breasts for the top. Use a pint of boiling water for a full grown chicken, boil rapidly a few minutes, then add a tablespoonful each of butter and flour stirred to a smooth paste, cover close and simmer gently but unceasingly till tender. Drain into a bowl all the broth, and set the pot, with the chicken undisturbed in it, upon the stove. If the broth is too oily, skim from it as much grease as desired, add a tablespoonful of flour stirred with two tablespoonfuls of sweet cream or milk to a paste, and season highly, as the gravy must give seasoning to the chicken. Pour the seasoned gravy over the chicken, and simmer for two minutes, and serve meat_and gravy together. Pursuing essentially the same method, stewed chicken can be varied by using less water and more cream or milk, by browning the chicken either before or after it is cooked, and adding oysters, mushrooms, truffles, etc. By these slight and seemingly unimportant variations it becomes chicken fricassee, chicken saute, chicken marengo, etc., until a dozen or more dishes with fanciful foreign names are artistically evolved from a very simple, unpretentious stewed chicken. A chicken a year old requires stewing for at least an hour, and each year added to the life of the fowl necessitates an additional hour's stewing.