Clean the chicken, and stuff the breast and part of the body with dressing made as follows : For a pair of chickens weighing between seven and eight pounds, take one quart of stale bread (being sure not to have any hard pieces), and break up in very fine crumbs. Add a table-spoonful of salt, a scant teaspoonful of pepper, a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, half a teaspoonful of powdered sage, one of summer savory and a scant half cupful of butter. Mix well together. This gives a rich dressing that will separate like rice when served. Now truss the chickens, and dredge well with salt. Take soft butter in the hand, and rub thickly over the chicken; then dredge rather thickly with flour. Place on the side, on the meat rack, and put into a hot oven for a few moments, that the flour in the bottom of the pan may brown. When it is browned, put in water enough to cover the pan. Baste every fifteen minutes with the gravy in the pan, and dredge with salt, pepper and flour. When one side is browned, turn, and brown the other. The last position in which the chicken should bake is on its back, that the breast may be nicely frothed and browned. The last basting is on the breast, and should be done with soft butter, and the breast should be dredged with flour. Putting the butter on the chicken at first, and then covering with flour, makes a paste, which keeps the juices in the chicken, and also supplies a certain amount of rich basting that is absorbed into the meat. It really does not take as much butter to baste poultry or game in this manner as by the old method of putting it on with a spoon after the bird began to cook. The water in the pan must often be renewed; and always be careful not to get in too much at a time. It will take an hour and a quarter to cook a pair of chickens, each weighing between three and a half and four pounds; anything larger, an hour and a half. A sure sign that they are done is the readiness of joints to separate from the body. If the chickens are roasted in the tin-kitchen, before the fire, it will take a quarter of an hour longer than in the oven.

Gravy for chickens : Wash the hearts, livers, gizzards and necks and put on to boil in three pints of water; boil down to one pint. Take them all up. Put the liver on a plate, and mash fine with the back of the spoon; return it to the water in which it was boiled. Mix two table-spoonfuls of flour with half a cupful of cold water. Stir into the gravy, season well with salt and pepper, and set back where it will simmer, for twenty minutes. Take up the chickens, and take the meat rack out of the pan. Then tip the pan to one side, to bring all the gravy together. Skim off the fat. Place the pan on top of the stove and turn into it one cupful of water. Let this boil up, in the meantime scraping everything from the sides and bottom of the pan. Turn this into the made gravy, and let it all boil together while you are removing the skewers and strings from the chickens.