Prairie Chicken Recipe

From MRS. RUFUS S. FROST, of Massachusetts, Lady Manager.
Prepare the birds with great care; place in baking tin and put in
oven. Pour into the tin enough water, boiling hot, to cover the bottom
of the tin or bake pan; cover the bake pan with another tin; keep them
closely covered and let them cook very steadily until tender, adding
from time to time enough boiling hot water to keep birds from burning,
or even _sticking_ to the tin. When very tender remove from the
oven and from the bake pan, carefully saving all the liquid in the
pan, which you set on top of the stove, which is the foundation and
the _flavor_ for your sauce or gravy which you make _in
this_ pan for your birds after they are broiled. Have in an earthen
dish some melted butter; dip the birds in the butter and then in
Indian or corn meal and put on the gridiron to brown and finish
cooking; keep them hot as possible until you serve. Arrange nicely
trimmed pieces of toasted bread on the heated platter, put on each
piece a bird, pour over and around the birds on the platter a sauce
which you make _in_ the bake pan in which your birds were semi-
cooked, and which you have kept on top of the range while your birds
were broiling. Pour into this pan of _liquid_ or "juice" one
teacup sweet cream, and thicken with one tablespoon butter, yolk of
one egg and two tablespoons of Indian meal; let it boil up once just
to thicken, and pour boiling hot onto the birds and toast on platter,
saving some to send in separate serving dish. If you prefer flour to
the corn meal to dip the birds in after the melted butter bath, use
flour also to thicken the sauce or gravy, which should be a brown
sauce or gravy and is generally brown enough if made in roasting pan.
A prize cook in Washington once confided to me that "a leetle last
year's spiced pickle syrup am luscious flavor for gravy of the wee
birds, robins, quail, snipe and them like." Alas! In the same moment
of flattering triumph for _me_, she added--triumphantly on
_her_ part also--"Lor, chile, I'se de only one libing dis day
dat knows nuff to use that same, sure!"

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