Mrs. Roundell's Practical cookery book

Boiled Chicken. — When the fowl is firmly trussed put it into hot, not boiling, water, deep enough to cover it completely. Bring the water to simmering point, and from that time allow three-quarters of an hour for a large fowl, twenty to twentyfive minutes for chickens. Simmer very gently, skimming all the time. The old-fashioned parsley-and-butter sauce is sometimes liked. For this pick clean a large bunch of parsley, blanch it in boiling water for five minutes, dry it, mince it very finely, and add enough of the parsley to some warm melted butter to make the butter thickly speckled with green. Add the parsley cold at the last moment, or it will turn brown. It is an excellent plan to put a fowl into the stock for soup when the soup and vegetables are at boiling point. Let it go on boiling for five minutes, and then only simmer till the fowl is cooked. For an old bird this answers particularly well ; the fowl gains from the soup, and the soup gains from the fowl. Of course extra sauce must be made, and this should be done by using all the giblets of the bird, as has been described before. Braised Chicken. — Put the chicken into a stewpan in which an ounce of butter has been melted. (The chicken must be trussed as for boiling, and the liver, some butter, and a sliced onion, should be inside it.) Add some slices of bacon above and below the chicken, and pour in a pint of lukewarm stock. Put the cover of the pan on, laying a buttered paper over the chicken, and let it simmer very gently for two hours. Then add either a dozen mushrooms or a dozen sauce oysters, and simmer again till the chicken is exceedingly tender. Now take it out, put it on a hot dish, strain the broth and reduce it by boiling quickly to a glaze. Brush the chicken over with the glaze. A brown sauce made of the giblets and well flavoured with the mushroom trimmings should be poured round the chicken. Or oyster sauce should be handed, and a little gravy from the broth poured round the chicken. Spitchcocked Chicken. — This is much the same as the American “ broiler,” and in each case the bird must be quite young. Spitchcock, as with Eels, means split open, and must not be spelt with an A. Split the bird through the backbone with a very sharp knife, season it very well, particularly the inside, with pepper. Then lay it flat on the gridiron with the inner pai't of the bird next the fire. See that the gridiron is hot and very thoroughly buttered, and hold it a good way above the fire. Let the fowl remain on the gridiron till it is half done, which will be in twenty minutes, and be most careful that it does not bum. Baste well with butter. Turn it, and broil the other side for twenty minutes. Broil the Chicken a good brown, and serve with broiled or stewed mushrooms. A small fowl will take five minutes less on each side. The Spitchcock can be skewered open, and broiled for twenty minutes in all, in a hanging gridiron. This is far less trouble, and the result is far less good.