A Course of Lectures on the Principles of Domestic Economy and Cookery

little cuts in the other direction, and then by slicing it across you get your chopped onion. A very nice addition to force meat is chestnuts, either our ordinary American chestnut, or French or Italian chestnuts. These are quite large. I presume they are for sale at the fruit stores here. Our ordinary American chestnut is very good. Choose rather large chestnuts and either roast or boil them; take off the husks and skins and thus use them to stuff the chicken with, either simply using the chestnuts seasoned with salt, pepper and butter, or if you have boiled or roasted and skinned them, mix them with bread and seasoning. Then, after having prepared the force meat, you put it into the chicken, sew it up and truss it into shape. I will show you directly how to do that so as to keep the chicken plump, and so that it does not, in roasting, spread apart. I shall sew it with a trussing needle and a cord, or you might accomplish the same purpose, by using skewers, putting the skewers just where I put the cords. In sewing up a chicken after it is stuffed, remember what I said this morning; take large stitches with coarse cord so that you can easily see where to take the threads out when the chicken is done. After the chicken is trussed, if you are going to bake it, put it into a pan without any water, for the same reason that I gave you this morning. The water will soak it, half simmer it; you do not need water to keep it from burning, because a little drippings will soon come from the chicken; brown it and then dredge it with flour, and baste it every fifteen minutes or so. Bake it until it is tender and nicely brown; the time of course depends upon the heat of the oven. Truss the chicken first, pushing the legs as far up as you can towards the breast, and run the trussing needle, which is simply a long needle, through so as to