(To serve two or four people)

Select a chicken of about two pounds in weight; cut off the neck on a line with the top of the collar bones. Cut the chicken down the entire length of the backbone, clean and wash inside and out; flatten the breast bone with a cleaver or wooden mallet; unhang the wings and second joints. Let broil, skin side down, over a bed of coals or under the gas flame, about six minutes, then turn and cook about three minutes on the skin side. Baste liberally with butter and let cook in the oven (or farther from the gas flame) about an hour. Baste occasionally with melted butter.

Have a plank made hot in the oven; set the chicken on the plank, skin side down; fill the space between the chicken and the edge of the plank with hot, boiled rice; about the chicken dispose four flowerets of hot, cooked cauliflower, four corn fritters, four hot, stuffed tomatoes and four slices of bacon, rolled, pinned with a wooden toothpick and fried in deep fat. Serve cream or Hollandaise sauce in a bowl. Often both sauces are prepared. Mashed potato may replace the rice. Recipes for corn fritters and stuffed tomatoes will be found in Chapter IV.