How we cook in Tennessee ..

Fried Chicken. — Cut off the wings and legs, cut breast in two and also back. Wash well and throw into weak salt water, to extract the blood. Let it remain half hour or more. Drain off water and dry with clean towel; half hour before dinner lay on a dish, sprinkle salt over it and dip in flour on both sides. Have ready in frying pan some hot lard, in which lay each piece. Cover closely and fry brown on one side, then turn each piece. Do not put on the hottest part of the stove as you want it to cook all the way through and not scorch. After taking out pieces as they are brown, make the gravy by sprinkling sifted flour in the frying pan, allowing it to brown before hot water is added ; stir quickly ; half cup milk may be added. Pour into the dish, but not over the chicken. The dish may be garnished with small squares of pastry fried in hot grease, three inches long and two inches wide. Boiled Chicken. — For boiling, choose a fat fowl. Fill the breast with forcemeat, or stuffing, and tie carefully round the body, or secure by sewing, which should not be removed before sending to the table. Put it in hot water, and boil gently till done. Serve with drawn butter sauce, in which three or four hard boiled eggs have been chopped. This sauce can be made ornamental by chopping one boiled beet fine, and mixing with it. Pour part of the sauce over the chicken, to garnish it, and put the remainder in a sauce boat, to be served out as desired. To Boil a Hen. — Never cook chicken the same day it is killed. Put the hen in a domestic bag in a pot of hot water, adding salt to the water. Have a saucer in bottom of pot to keep it from scorching. Add more hot water as it boils down, keep covered. Cook about three hours. Take out the hen and skim off the richest of the liquor. Add this to one pint or less of thickened milk. Carve the chicken and pour over it this gravy, to which has been added three hard boiled eggs nicely sliced. The water in which chicken was boiled may be used as soup stock next day. Broiled Chicken. — Prepare chickens by cutting open the back, soak half hour in cold water, then rub with salt, and place them with skin down, in a skillet greased with hot lard or but- ter. A weight (a flatiron will do) should be placed on them to make them flat. Turn often, replacing the weight. Cook about half hour, if chickens are large; when done pour melted butter and pepper over them and serve hot. Broiled Chicken. — Cut the chicken open through the backbone ; have an iron skillet pretty hot, and a teaspoon of lard to prevent chicken from sticking; place a tin plate on top and an iron on top of that ; set back on a cooler part of the stove and let it broil slowly, turning when brown ; take up when done and put on hot platter with salt and pepper sprinkled over and melted butter poured over; garnish with small crisp lettuce leaves. Broiled Chicken on Toast. — Broil the usual way, until well done. Lay slices of buttered toast on a platter and take the chicken up over it. Add to the gravy in the pan part of a cup of cream, or milk ; thicken with a little flour and pour over the chicken. This is considered excellent.