The Chemistry of Cookery

To treat the prime parts of good beef or mutton in this manner is to perpetrate a domestic atrocity. I may here mention an experiment that I have made lately. I killed a superannuated hen—more than six years old, but otherwise in very good condition. Cooked in the ordinary way she would have been uneatably tough. Instead of being thus cooked, she was gently stewed about four hours. I cannot guarantee to the maintenance of the theoretical temperature, having suspicion of _some_ simmering. After this she was left in the water until it cooled, and on the following day was roasted in the usual manner—_i.e._ in a roasting oven. The result was excellent; as tender as a full-grown chicken roasted in the ordinary way, and of quite equal flavour, in spite of the very good broth obtained by the preliminary stewing. This surprised me. I anticipated the softening of the tendons and ligaments, but supposed that the extraction of the juices would have spoiled the flavour. It must have diluted it, and that so much remained was probably due to the fact that an old fowl is more fully flavoured than a young chicken. The usual farmhouse method of cooking old hens is to stew them simply, the rule in the Midlands being one hour in the pot for every year of age. The feature of the above experiment was the supplementary roasting. As the laying season comes to an end, old hens become a drug in the market; and those among my readers who have not a hen-roost of their own will much oblige their poulterers by ordering a hen that is warranted to be four years old or upwards. If he deals fairly he will supply a specimen upon which they may repeat my experiment very cheaply. It offers the double economy of utilising a nearly waste product, and obtaining chicken-broth and roast fowl simultaneously. Another experiment on the cooking of old hens was recently made by a neighbour at my suggestion, and proved very successful. The bird was cut up and gently stewed in fat like the