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To Roast a Chicken
The method of preparing and roasting a chicken is the same as for preparing and roasting a turkey. The time required for roasting a chicken varies according to its size and age, but an hour and a half is sufficient time to allow for a large, full-grown chicken not over a year old. Fowls more than a year old should be steamed a longer or shorter time, according to age, before being roasted, or they will be tough and dry; but boiling and stewing are such admirable methods of cooking tough fowls that it is advisable never to roast a chicken unless it is young and tender.
This is a method note rather than a full recipe: it assumes you have already read the turkey entry and know how to draw, truss and baste a bird. What it leaves out is everything a modern cook now relies on, starting with a number on the oven dial.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given; period ranges were generally judged without a thermometer. Roast at 375F, or start at 425F for 20 minutes and drop to 350F for the remainder.
- Doneness, not clock timeAn hour and a half is given for a large, full-grown bird; no weight is stated. Smaller supermarket chickens of 3-4 lb will be done in 60-75 minutes. Judge by an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh, clear of bone: 165F.
- "A large, full-grown chicken not over a year old"This is a bird considerably older and leaner than anything sold today. A modern broiler is slaughtered at six to nine weeks, which is why the long times here overcook it.
- Fowls over a year oldWhat the book calls a fowl is now sold as a stewing hen or boiling fowl, and only from butchers and farm suppliers. The advice to stew rather than roast one still holds: the connective tissue needs long, wet heat to soften.
- The steaming stepPre-steaming a tough bird before roasting is sound in principle but awkward in practice. Simmering gently at around 180F until the joints loosen, then finishing in a hot oven to brown, achieves the same thing with better control.
- Basting and fatOlder birds carried little fat, and period roasting instructions commonly call for frequent basting or laying salt pork over the breast. Modern chickens self-baste adequately; rub the skin with butter or oil and leave the oven door shut.
- RestingNot mentioned here, but let the bird stand 15 minutes under loose foil before carving so the juices redistribute.
- YieldA 4-5 lb roasting chicken serves four to six, depending on whether it is the centre of the meal or part of a larger table.
Cookbooks of this period routinely sorted poultry by age rather than weight, because that was the distinction that mattered: a spring chicken, a roasting chicken and a fowl were three different foods requiring three different treatments. Birds often came to the kitchen whole, and age was judged from the pliability of the breastbone and the smoothness of the legs. The confident instruction to steam an older fowl before roasting belongs to a period before industrial broiler production, which from the mid-twentieth century onward made young, uniform, tender birds the default and quietly retired most of this knowledge. The author's closing advice "never to roast a chicken unless it is young and tender" is the practical conclusion of that system of judgement.