This section is from the book "Common Sense In The Household. A Manual Of Practical Housewifery", by Marion Harland. Also available from Amazon: Common Sense in the Household.
It is possible to render a tough fowl eatable by boiling or stewing it with care. Never broil such! And even when assured that your " broiler " is young, it is wise to make this doubly sure by laying it upon sticks extending from side to side of a dripping-pan full of boiling water. Set this in the oven, invert a tin pan over the chicken, and let it steam for half an hour. This process relaxes the muscles, and renders supple the joints, besides preserving the juices that would be lost in parboiling. The chicken should be split down the back, and wiped perfectly dry before it is steamed. Transfer from the vapor-bath to a buttered gridiron, inside downward. Cover with a tin pan or common plate, and broil until tender and brown, turning several times; from half to three-quarters of an hour will be sufficient. Put into a hot chafing-dish, and butter very well. Send to table smoking hot.
Clean, wash, and cut to pieces a couple of Spring chickens. Have ready in a frying-pan enough boiling lard or dripping to cover them well. Dip each piece in beaten egg when you have salted it, then in cracker-crumbs, and fry until brown. If the chicken is large, steam it before frying, as directed in the foregoing receipt. When you have taken out the meat, throw into the hot fat a dozen sprigs of parsley, and let them remain a minute - just long enough to crisp, but not to dry them. Garnish the chicken by strewing these over it.
Cut up half a pound of fat salt pork in a frying-pan, and fry until the grease is extracted, but not until it browns. Wash and cut up a young chicken (broiling size), soak in salt and water for half an hour; wipe dry, season with pepper, and dredge with flour; then fry in the hot fat until each piece is a rich brown on both sides. Take up, drain, and set aside in a hot covered dish. Pour into the gravy left in the frying-pan a cup of milk - half cream is better; thicken with a spoonful of flour and a tablespoonful of butter; add some chopped parsley, boil up, and pour over the hot chicken. This is a standard dish in the Old Dominion, and tastes nowhere else as it does when eaten on Virginia soil. The cream gravy is often omitted, and the chicken served up dry, with bunches of fried parsley dropped upon it.
Line the bottom and sides of a pot with a good rich paste, reserving enough for a top crust and for the square bits to be scattered through the pie. Butter the pot very lavishly, or your pastry will stick to it and burn. Cut up a fine large fowl, and half a pound of corned ham or salt pork. Put in a layer of the latter, pepper it, and cover with pieces of the chicken, and this with the paste dumplings or squares. If you use potatoes, parboil them before putting them into the pie, as the first water in which they are boiled is rank and unwholesome. The potatoes should be sliced and laid next the pastry squares; then another layer of pork, and so on until your chicken is used up. Cover with pastry rolled out quite thick, and slit this in the middle. Heat very slowly, and boil two hours. Turn into a large dish, the lower crust on top,.and the gravy about it.
This is the old-fashioned pot-pie, dear to the memory of men who were school-boys thirty and forty years ago. If you are not experienced in such manufactures, you had better omit the lower crust; and, having browned the upper, by putting a hot pot-lid or stove-cover on top of the pot for some minutes, remove dexterously without breaking. Pour out the chicken into a dish, and set the crust above it.
Veal, beef-steak, lamb (not mutton), hares, etc, may be substituted for the chicken. The pork will salt it sufficiently.
 
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