In the 1800s, people raised chickens for food or purchased them whole from the butcher. It took a lot longer to prepare chicken in those days, especially having to cook on wood burning stoves and without oven thermometers. But people still wanted variety in their meals, and looked to cookbooks for recipes.

RECIPES  BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS

SPANISH CHICKEN STEW
Clean and joint two spring chickens. Brown in butter and add five sliced onions, a can of tomatoes, four cloves of garlic, two tablespoons of butter, a pod of red pepper without the seeds, and salt to taste. Cook slowly for forty-five minutes, adding stock or water if necessary to keep from burning. Take out the pepper and the garlic, add a can of peas, and simmer for fifteen minutes longer. Thicken the gravy with two tablespoons of flour rubbed smooth with a little cold water and the yolk of an egg well-beaten.

PICKLED CHICKEN
Boil four chickens till tender enough for the meat to fall from the bones. Put the meat in a stone jar and pour over it three pints of good, cold cider vinegar and a pint and a half of the water in which the chickens were boiled. Add spices if preferred, and it will be ready for use in two days. This is a popular Sunday evening dish and it is good for luncheon at any time.

CHICKEN FRIED IN BATTER
Make a batter of two eggs, a teacup* of milk, a little salt, and thicken with flour. Have the chickens cut up, washed, and seasoned. Dip the pieces in the batter separately and fry them in hot lard. When brown on both sides, take them up on a dish, and make a gravy as for fried chickens. Lard fries much nicer than butter, which is apt to burn.

*teacup – same as a jill or gill; four ounces in the U.S. and five ounces in the U.K.

CHICKEN À LA CRÉOLE
Clean and cut up a young chicken, season with salt and pepper, and fry brown in hot fat with two thinly sliced onions. Dredge with flour and add one cup each of white stock and stewed and strained tomatoes. Cook until it thickens, stirring constantly, and simmer the chicken in it until tender, adding more stock if needed. Add a tablespoon of tarragon vinegar, salt and pepper to season, and a cup of cooked and broken macaroni. Serve very hot with a garnish of parsley.

CHICKEN À LA WALDORF
Cut cold cooked chicken into dice. Reheat in two cups of cream, seasoning with salt and pepper. Thicken with the yolks of two eggs beaten with two tablespoons of Madeira wine. Mix thoroughly, and heat but do not boil. Take from the fire, add a heaping tablespoon of butter, and serve.

CURRIED CHICKEN
Clean and cut up a chicken and boil it until tender in water to cover. Drain the chicken and brown in butter with two small onions sliced. Sprinkle with two teaspoons of curry powder, pour over the water in which the chicken was boiled, heat thoroughly, and thicken while stirring with a tablespoon of flour rubbed smooth with a little cold water. Take from the fire, add the beaten yolk of an egg, and serve with a border of boiled rice.

CHICKEN CROQUETTES
Chop fine any fresh fowl,  and add an equal quantity of smoothly mashed potatoes. Mix, and season with butter, salt, black pepper, a little prepared mustard, and a little cayenne pepper. Make into cakes, dip in egg and bread-crumbs, and fry a light brown.

CHICKEN STEWED WHOLE
Fill the inside of a chicken with large oysters and mushrooms and fasten a tape round to keep them in. Put it in a tin pan with a cover, and put this into a large boiling pot with boiling water, which must not quite reach up to the top of the pan the chicken is in. Keep it boiling till the chicken is done, which would be in about an hour’s time after it begins to simmer. Remove the scum occasionally, and replenish with water as it boils away. Take all the gravy from it and put it into a small saucepan, keeping the chicken warm. Thicken the gravy with butter, flour, and add two tablespoons of chopped oysters, the yolks of two eggs boiled hard and minced fine, some seasoning, and a gill* of cream. Boil five minutes and dish the fowls.

*gill – same as a teacup. See Chicken Fried in Batter recipe above.

SMOTHERED CHICKEN
Split the chicken down the back as for broiling, wash well, and wipe dry. Lay it breast upward in a baking pan. Pour in two cups of boiling water with a tablespoon of butter. Cover with another pan turned upside down and fitting exactly the edges of the lower one.

Cook slowly half an hour in the oven. Lift the cover and baste plentifully with the butter water in the pan. Cover again and leave for twenty minutes more. Baste again, and yet once more in another quarter of an hour.

Try the chicken with a fork to see if it is done. An hour and ten minutes should be enough for a young fowl. Baste the last time with a tablespoon of butter, cover and leave in the oven ten minutes longer before transferring to a hot dish. The chicken should be of a fine yellow-brown all over, but crisped nowhere.

Thicken the gravy with a tablespoon of browned flour, add in a little water, and salt and pepper to taste. Boil up once, pour a cup over the chicken, and pour the rest into a gravy boat.

FRIED CHICKEN WITH GREEN PEPPERS
Clean and joint two spring chickens, fry brown in butter, and put into the oven to finish cooking. Seed and shred six sweet peppers and boil in salted water until soft. Drain, and add to the chicken. Pour over two cups of cream, bring to the boil, thicken with a little flour cooked in butter, and serve.

JELLIED CHICKEN
Have a chicken cleaned and cut up. Cook in boiling water to cover until the meat falls from the bones. Take out the bones, remove the skin, season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper, and arrange in a mold. Reduce the liquid by rapid boiling and add to it a package of soaked and dissolved gelatin, pepper and salt to season highly, and the juice of a lemon. Pour over the chicken and cool on ice. Serve with a garnish of hard-boiled eggs and parsley.

PRESSED CHICKEN (a nice luncheon dish) ~ Boil a chicken in as little water as possible, till the bones slip out and the gristly portions are soft. Remove the skin, pick the meat apart, and mix the dark and white meat. Remove the fat and season the liquor highly with salt and pepper; also with celery, chopped fine, salt, and lemon juice, if you desire. Boil down to one cup, and mix with the meat.

Butter a mold and decorate the bottom and sides with slices of hard-boiled eggs. Pack the meat in and set away to cool with a weight on the meat. When ready to serve, dip the mold in warm water and turn out carefully. Garnish with parsley, strips of lettuce , and radishes or beets.

Image from Deposit Photos

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What Are Your Favorite Ways to Cook Chicken? Please Leave a Comment Below.

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• Vintage Cooking From the 1800s – Poultry
  

  Do you enjoy reading old-fashioned cookbooks? Learn how people used and cooked poultry in the days before gas and electricity were available in homes. Food was precious back then and nothing was wasted. It was a source of pride to cook delicious food for the family and knowing how to budget time and money.

  “Vintage Cooking in the 1800s – Poultry” provides information, advice, and recipes gathered from various cookbooks published in the 1800s. It will give you a sense of history and an appreciation of what cooking was like in olden times.

  Some How-to Sections:

  • How to Select and Dress Poultry
  • How to Keep Poultry Fresh.
  • How to Boil, Stew, Bake, Roast, and Fry poultry.
  • How to Cook Giblets, Make Dressings, Sauces, Gravies, Pies, and Soups.
  • How to Make Dishes from Chicken, Duck, Goose and Turkey.

  Available from these online Retailers:

  Amazon, Kobo, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Scribd, 24 Symbols,  Playster, Angues & Robertson, Mondadori Store, and more

  Also available in Regular Print and Large Print on Amazon.

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