Often hundred-year-old cooking tips and advice still are relevant today, but sometimes the old advice is very different. Here are some tips for cooking poultry in a 1925 cookbook:
No poultry should be cooked before it has hung for at least eight hours. In many large cities there are live poultry markets and each bird is killed as it is bought. These birds should be hung overnight before they are drawn and prepared for cooking.
When any fowl or game is being prepared for cooking, it should be thoroughly washed inside and out, and if there is an unpleasant odor from the inside, rub it with a little cooking soda. If the odor disappears quickly the bird is good to eat. If the odor persists it is best to cut the bird open to see whether there are any bruises or recognizable bad places. A fowl that has a bad odor had better not be eaten.
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The young chicken lends itself to many kinds of savory cooking. The older chickens are better for soups, stew, and salads. If a fowl is very old it will hardly make even a good salad because the white meat is apt to be coarse and somewhat tasteless.
Leftover fowl and game is excellent for pies, stew, croquettes and any number of casserole dishes. They should be combined with a rich gravy to give the best results.
The Home Makers’ Cooking School Cook Book (1925)
This is very interesting. I’d be concerned that the chicken would spoil hanging out in the air for 8 hours! Lately we’ve been enjoying roasting pasture-raised organic chickens. They taste so much better than the other chickens available in the grocery store. I bet chickens tasted much better 100 years ago.
mmm. . . The roasted chickens sound wonderful. I don’t roast chickens very often but when I do we always really enjoy them.
I am not a hunter, but it was not unusual to see deer hanging outside. My mom always washed the chicken with baking soda. Now they say not to even rinse the chicken. I think most important is to cook it well.
I always struggle with the recent guidance about not washing poultry. Like you, when I was younger that was what I learned to do. At Thanksgiving, I always want to run water through the inside of the turkey before I stuff it, and my daughter firmly tells me not to.
So many changes in things over time especially when you reach a certain age. Just in general, some things people are currently upset about, I’m like been there done that.
That was very interesting.
I found it interesting how much has changed (and gotten simpler) when it comes to preparing poultry.
I wonder if there was a pantry or cold room for hanging meat… I am sure on the farm but how did they do it in cities?
I’m not sure. I grew up on a farm where we had a pantry that was unheated during the winter months that we sometimes used like a refrigerator (especially over the holidays when we were preparing lots of foods), but people living in apartments or small homes won’t have had rooms like that.
We have an enclosed breezeway from the utility room to the garage. I use it like a walk in cooler in winter months. Sure miss it in the summer!
This makes me really want to not eat chicken. I can remember my grandmother killing a chicken and hanging it on a wire on the fence. It was so all the blood could drain out, and then she dressed it.
My mother could dress a chicken; I have no idea how to do it (and no need to know). Dressing chickens is a skill set that fewer people have today.
So true! While I have no idea how to dress a chicken, I did learn how to cut up a chicken, and am amazed at people today who have no idea how to do that! I may be overestimating my skill set, but given how many times I saw my grandmothers kill, clean and dress a chicken, I think I could figure it out in the event I had to do so! I know which parts inside the chicken you ate, and which ones you did not, and that is my guess on a good start!
You must have been more attentive then me when you were a child. I sort of know how to cut up a chicken. Over the years, when whole chickens were on sale, I’ve bought them and then cut them up, but the pieces never look quite right. I especially have difficulty separating the thigh from the leg. I also have difficulty with the back and breast. Basically, I generally have trouble cutting up a chicken.
We had chickens growing up and when a layer stopped laying, it ended up in the stew pot. My mom hung the thing in the shed, but it doesn’t seem like she did so for eight hours, but I was just a kid!
I also remember old layers ending up as stewing chickens. I have no idea how long my mother would have hung a chicken.
I remember that mom had to stew those chickens a long time!
It takes lots of cooking to get the meat from old chickens tender.
It is interesting how time from our childhood changes some memories. While I have vivid memories of seeing chickens flopping on the fence while the blood drained, I have no idea how long that took. It was just a fact of life then. You wanted to eat, you had to kill a chicken, butcher a pig or cow or be a prolific hunter. If you killed a deer, you had to know how to field dress it, and you certainly did not tie it on the front of your truck to take it home. I grew up learning it was not a sport, but what you did to help feed your family. There was no such thing as wanton killing.
It was just a part of rural life! The deer hanging on the tree in the front yard, not to impress anyone, but just to be convenient for the butchering. Nothing was wasted, not a scrap, and hunting was not a sport but a necessity. Once you got your deer, that was it for the year. Once you caught your limit of fish, you were done.
Exactly -I have similar memories. I also remember the neighbors on the next farm hanging pigs in their front yard when they were butchered them.
Yes hanging a freshly killed chicken was necessary to have the blood drain out… I’m not sure about the 8 hours but the chickens were usually killed in the morning and then cooked for dinner. Maybe they hung for 5 or 6 hours?? My grandmother would hang the chickens in the basement where it was cooler. She always had a bucket under each chicken to avoid making a mess. The neighbors had lots of chickens and they’d hang them on the clothes line. they would cook the chickens and then can the meat. My grandmother would always get some of the bones and make and can chicken broth! It was the best!!
Your comment is bringing back a memory from my childhood I’d forgotten. I can remember an old-fashioned country grocery store in the village near our farm. The owner used to sell quart jars of home-canned chicken meat with broth. My mother used to buy it to make lovely chicken noodle soup.
Every once in awhile they’d gift my grandmother with a jar. The meat was so tender! My grandmother would make chicken noodles – homemade egg noodles that were the best!!
mmm. . . I’m getting hungry.
I remember my mom teaching me to wring a chicken’s neck. Mom would hang the chicken over a bucket. I was fascinated that we had to pull out the feathers and then take a candle and burn off any bits that remained. That part smelled awful.
Whew, it was a lot of work to prepare a chicken back then.
Yes, it was. Those old tough chickens went into the stewpot to become chicken and dumplings. I love chicken and dumplings!
mmm. . . chicken and dumplings sounds good.