Boiled Fowl
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Dress, clean, and truss the fowl.
Tie the fowl in a piece of cheesecloth to prevent scum from discoloring the skin.
Cook
Place the fowl in a kettle half surrounded with boiling water.
Cover the kettle and cook slowly until the fowl is tender, turning occasionally.
Add salt during the last hour of cooking.
Serve
Serve with egg, oyster, or celery sauce.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Fowl
- Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle, moist cooking that breaks down connective tissue.
The step that matters
Cook slowly with the kettle covered. Vigorous boiling toughens meat and can make the skin split. A gentle, steady simmer lets the connective tissue soften slowly, so the fowl stays moist and tender.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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