Stuffing For Poultry

1 cup soft breadcrumbs 1 tablespoon butter 1 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon powdered thyme or sage

1 teaspoon grated onion

2 tablespoons water

Stewed Chicken

Draw and cut up a fowl. Put it, with the giblets, in enough boiling salted water (one teaspoonful of salt to each quart of water) to cover it. Let it boil for ten minutes and put it into a cooker for ten hours or more. If not quite tender, bring it again to a boil and cook it for from six to eight hours, depending upon its toughness. Skim off as much as possible of the fat from the liquor, pour off some of the liquor and save it to use as soup or stock, and thicken the remainder with two tablespoonfuls of flour for each cup of liquid, mixed to a paste with an equal quantity of water. A beaten egg or two, stirred into the gravy just before serving, improves it. Add pepper and salt to. taste, and serve the chicken on a hot platter with the gravy poured around it. The platter may be garnished with boiled rice piled about the chicken.

Chicken Fricassee

Draw a fowl and cut it in pieces, cook it as directed for stewed chicken, dredge the cooked pieces with salt and pepper, roll them in flour and saute them in fat taken from the stewed chicken. When richly browned, place the pieces on a hot platter and pour around them a brown sauce, made with the fat and the stock from the stewed chicken. Chicken fricassee is often served on a platter of hot toast.

Chicken Pie

Prepare and cook the chicken as for stewed chicken; cut the meat from the bones, put it into a baking-dish, cover it with chicken gravy, and put over the top a crust made as directed for meat pie on page 102. Bake this for thirty minutes in a moderate oven.

Curried Chicken

Prepare and cook one fowl as for stewed chicken, adding two onions, pared and cut into slices. Add one tablespoonful of curry powder to the flour when thickening the gravy. Or the chicken may be rolled in flour and browned in butter, and the curry powder added before putting it into the cooker. It is served with a border of boiled rice.

Creamed Chicken

Prepare and cook a fowl as directed for stewed chicken. Make White Sauce, using half chicken stock and half cream for the liquid. A little grated onion and one-fourth can of mushrooms may be added.

Braised Chicken

Draw, stuff, truss and roast a young chicken in a hot oven until it is brown; put it into a hot cooker-pail with water about one inch deep in the pan. Cover it quickly, bring it to a boil, and put it into a cooker for two and one-half hours or more. Make a brown sauce of the liquor in the pan. The giblets may be added when the chicken is put into the water, and may be chopped and added to the gravy. Only young, tender chicken can be treated in this way. A tough bird may be trussed and cooked in water to half cover it for ten or twelve hours before it is stuffed and browned. Baste it when in the oven with fat taken from the broth.

Jellied Chicken

Draw, clean, and cut up a fowl of about four or five pounds. Put it into a cooker-pail, add one teaspoonful of salt, two or three slices of onion, and cover the fowl with boiling water. Boil it for ten minutes, then put it in the cooker for ten or twelve hours. Boil it up again and replace it in the cooker for six hours or more. Repeat this if the meat is not found to be tender enough to fall readily from the bones. Remove the meat from the bones; take off the skin and season the meat with salt and pepper. Skim off all possible fat from the liquor and boil it down to about one cupful; strain it, and take off the remaining fat. Decorate the bottom of a mould or bread pan with parsley and slices of hard-cooked egg, pack in the meat and pour over it the stock. Place the meat under a weight, and leave it in a cold place till firm.

Braised Duck

Prepare and cook the duck in the same manner as braised chicken. If the duck is tough it may be cooked for eight or more hours in water in the cooker, then stuffed and browned in the oven, basting it with fat from the broth.

Braised Goose

Prepare it as braised chicken; or, if it is tough, cook it in water in a cooker as old braised chicken, until it is nearly tender. Remove it, stuff it, and brown it in a hot oven, basting it with fat from the broth.

Potted Pigeons

Clean, stuff, and truss six pigeons, place them upright in a cooker-pail and pour over them one quart of water in which celery has been cooked. If the water was not salted for the celery, add one teaspoonful of salt. Cover the pail, boil the birds for five minutes, and put them into a cooker for five or six hours, or till tender. Remove them from the water, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, dredge them with flour, and brown the entire surface in pork fat. Make two cups of Brown Sauce, using butter and stock from the pigeons; heat the birds in this, place each one on a piece of dry toast, and pour the gravy over it. Garnish it with parsley.