Poultry should never be eaten in less than six or eight hours after
it is killed; but it should be picked and drawn as soon as possible.
There is no direr disgrace to our Northern markets than the practice of
sending whole dead fowls to market. I have bought such from responsible
poultry dealers, and found them uneatable, from having remained undrawn
until the flavor of the craw and intestines had impregnated the whole
body. Those who are conversant with the habit of careful country
housewives, of keeping up a fowl without food for a day and night
before killing and dressing for their own eating, cannot but regard
with disgust the surcharged crops and puffy sides of those sold _by
weight_ in the shambles. If you want to know what you really pay for
poultry bought in these circumstances, weigh the offal extracted from
the fowl by your cook, and deduct from the market weight. “But don’t
you know it actually poisons a fowl to lie so long undressed?” once
exclaimed a Southern lady to me. “In _our_ markets they are offered for
sale ready picked and drawn, with the giblets—also cleaned—tucked under
their wings.”
I know nothing about the poisonous nature of the entrails and crops. I
do assert that the custom is unclean and unjust. And this I do without
the remotest hope of arousing my fellow-housekeepers to remonstrance
against established usage. Only it relieves my mind somewhat to grumble
at what I cannot help. The best remedy I can propose for the grievance
is to buy live fowls, and, before sending them home, ask your butcher
to decapitate them; the probabilities being greatly in favor of the
supposition that your cook is too “tinder-hearted” to attempt the job.
One word as to the manner of roasting meats and fowls. In this day
of ranges and cooking-stoves, I think I am speaking within bounds
when I assume that not one housekeeper in fifty uses a spit, or even
a tin kitchen, for such purposes. It is in vain that the writers of
receipt-books inform us with refreshing _naïveté_ that all our meats
are baked, not roasted, and expatiate upon the superior flavor of
those prepared upon the English spits and in old fashioned kitchens,
where enormous wood-fires blazed from morning until night. I shall
not soon forget my perplexity when, an inexperienced housekeeper and
a firm believer in all “that was writ” by older and wiser people, I
stood before my neat Mott’s “Defiance,” a fine sirloin of beef ready
to be cooked on the table behind me, and read from my Instruction-book
that my “fire should extend at least eight inches beyond the roaster
on either side!” I am not denying the virtues of spits and tin
kitchens—only regretting that they are not within the reach of every
one. In view of this fact, let me remark, for the benefit of the
unfortunate many, that, in the opinion of excellent judges, the
practice of roasting meat in close ovens has advantages. Of these I
need mention but two, to wit, the preservation of the flavor of the
article roasted, and the prevention of its escape to the upper regions
of the dwelling.