Notable Things about Fowl.

Yesterday we received some interesting insight into historical methods of prolonging the life of fresh food from the book of the week (A Thousand Notable Things, 1815, original version late sixteenth century). One of those methods was for keeping fowl meat fresher for longer, in the time well before refrigeration. The threat of salmonella and other unpleasant bugs springs to the forefront of the mind today, but in 1815 the public (and the scientific community) lived in blissful ignorance of microbes, as it was still several decades away from Louis Pasteur’s seminal work, and the development of Germ Theory.

I wondered what else the book had to say about the preparation of fowl for the table.

Out of the Fig Tree there comes such a sharp Vapour, that if a Hen be hanged thereon, it will so prepare her that she will be soon and easily roasted. Plut. And the like will be if the feathers be plucked off from the Fowls, and then laid or covered a day or two in a heap of Wheat. - It is confirmed by experience, saith Mizatdus

How to tell if it is boiled enough:

If the bottom of a Seething Pot, with Meat, newly taken from the fire, may be touched or felt without harm or danger of burning, then certainly the same Meat is boiled enough; but if it be hot, and not sufferable, then it is not sufficiently sod. This I know to be true, for I have seen the trial thereof.

Quotation for the Day.

As for those grapefruit and buttermilk diets, I'll take roast chicken and dumplings.
Hattie McDaniel