Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping

it two cupfuls of cold duck, cut into neat pieces an inch long. Boil one minute to heat the meat thoroughly, and serve. Garnish with sippets of fried bread. CHICKENS Roast chickens Singe to get rid of down, draw and wash well, rinsing the cavity of each fowl with soda and water. Wipe and fill bodies and craws with a stuffing of dry crumbs, well-seasoned with pepper, salt and butter. Tie up the neck and bind legs and wings close to the body with soft cord or tapes. Lay upon the grating of your covered roaster; dash a cupful of boiling water over them, cover, and roast fifteen minutes to the pound. Drain off the gravy, and set in iced water to throw up the fat. Wash the chickens over with butter, dredge with flour and brown. Clip the threads and dish. Thicken the gravy with browned flour, add the chopped giblets (previously boiled tender), boil up once and turn into a boat. Boiled fowls Prepare as for roasting; sew up in white netting, or in coarse lace, and souse four times in boiling water. Then put over the fire in cold, slightly salted water, covering deeply; bring slowly to the boil, and cook gently fifteen minutes to the pound. Have ready egg-or oyster-sauce, or bread-sauce. Pour a few spoonfuls of hot butter, salted and peppered, over the chickens, the rest into a boat. Smothered chickens Broilers, and other really young fowls, are necessary for this dish. Split down the back when you have cleaned and washed them. Lay them out flat on the grating of your roaster, skin side down, and put into a very hot oven, covered. Have ready half a cupful of melted butter, and after five minutes baste the chickens well with this. Turn them as soon as the inside has colored slightly; baste again with butter; when nearly done dredge thickly with flour and wash again with butter. When they are brown, and the flesh is tender in the joints, they are done. Thirty minutes should be sufficient. Baste frequently, and as soon as they