After the appearance, in "The Century Magazine" of November, 1911, of
my article on Ungastronomic America, in which I denounced the practice
of offering the public undrawn, cold-storage poultry, I was bombarded
with abusive letters from packers and others, and a periodical,
called "The Steward," fancied that it had completely demolished
me by quoting the results obtained by Dr. Mary E. Pennington, in
collaboration with Evelyn Witmer and H. C. Pierce, during a series of
observations described in a circular entitled "The Comparative Rate of
Decomposition in Drawn and Undrawn Market Poultry" published in 1911 by
the Department of Agriculture. This result of these observations was
that "undrawn poultry decomposes more slowly than does poultry which
has been either wholly or partially eviscerated."
This statement does not agree with the conclusion reached and printed
in the Bulletin No. 144 to which I have already referred, that "under
precisely the same conditions of temperature and humidity, drawn fowls
will keep from twenty to thirty days longer than those not drawn."
This statement is doubtless correct--provided the fowls have been
eviscerated in such a way as to keep the cavity absolutely free from
contamination. If this is _not_ done, the drawn fowl will, for obvious
reasons, spoil even sooner than the undrawn. It is _not_ usually done
by the American packers; and the moral is, _not_ that undrawn fowl is
preferable to drawn fowl for packing, but that these packers should
send their men to France or Germany to learn how properly to draw fowls.
The consumer, anyway, is not interested in "keeping qualities." What
he wants is chicken that is good to eat, and the shorter a time it has
been kept, the better for him, in every way.
Dr. Wiley refers to experiments which have "shown the advisability of
packing drawn poultry in tin cartons, carefully closed"; adding that
"fowls thus treated preserve to a remarkable degree their freshness and
palatability."
If that degree of freshness and palatibilty is sufficient to satisfy
the consumer, then cold storage has a future. If not, cold storage is
doomed, for undrawn, frozen poultry will, I feel sure, _not_ be eaten
much longer by the American public.
Why do we eat poultry, anyway? Surely not merely because we want food.
If that were the case, why waste money on expensive chicken or turkey,
when we could get the same amount of nourishment from many other foods
at a mere fraction of the cost? _The reason why we eat chicken in
preference to those other foods is that we want to enjoy its flavor._
And we do _not_ want frozen, undrawn poultry, not only because the
freezing spoils the flavor but because the leaving of the entrails in
the animal makes it unwholesome.
One of the main arguments of the packers in favor of leaving fowls
undrawn is that they dry out sooner when drawn. A more deadly boomerang
it would be difficult to throw. There is only one way in which the
drying carcass of a fowl can get its moisture: from the contents of
the entrails. That is what is meant by osmosis. Thus out of their own
mouths the packers stand convicted of offering the public fowl which is
disgustingly tainted.
The best part of the fowl--the second joint--gets the taint soonest,
because it lies nearest the intestines. The wings and drumsticks get it
last. It is important to know this, because it explains why experts may
differ as to the time it takes to spoil the flavor of a stored bird.
Usually the process is quite rapid.
The whole question of the tainting of meat by osmosis deserves much
more attention than it has received. A wild boar has to be eviscerated
at once after being killed. If this is not done, none of the meat is
fit to eat except the head--which explains why "wild boar's head," and
the head alone--often figures on bills of fare in France and Germany.
My wife, who was brought up in Southern France knew a wealthy silk
merchant, a great hunter in his own domains, who always promptly
removed the entrails of the boars he killed, before the carcass grew
cold, the consequence being that all the meat was good to eat, as his
friends were given many a chance to find out.
For several years some of the New York butchers have indulged in the
custom of exhibiting in their windows the carcasses of lambs with their
pelts still on. If a Paris butcher did that, the first of his customers
coming along would ask him if he didn't know that unless the pelt is
taken off at once after killing a _mouton_, the meat gets from it a
disagreeable "sheepy" flavor--which is a very different thing from the
unique and delicious flavor properly dressed mutton has.
Perhaps the most striking illustration of the rapid action of osmosis
is provided by venison, which is unfit to eat if the deer has been
tortured by a cruel chase. Its terror affects the digestive juices, and
the whole body becomes tainted.