To Boil Chickens, 1846

Boiled chicken with drawn butter and parsley.
And potatoes and parsnips.

 

 

Tried another approach to boiled chicken, this time from The Young Housekeeper's Friend (Boston, 1846):

To Boil Chickens.---STUFF them with the same as directed for a boiled turkey, or boil them without stuffing if preferred. Skewer them up into a good shape, as when prepared to roast, and boil them one hour. Eat them with drawn butter and cut parsley. It is an improvement to mash the livers and put into the butter. If they can be carefully skimmed, they need no cloth around them.

It's not horribly dissimilar from my last attempt. I did take the receipt's permission to not stuff the bird, and to omit tying a cloth around it. The skewers rather defeated me, though I did manage to tie the drumsticks. I skimmed the fat off the water as indicated, and threw in some marjoram in a nod to the boiled turkey receipt on an earlier page. I also boiled the chicken for 1 hour rather than 2--and it still was soft enough to fall apart when I tried to lift it from the water. I set the chicken in a low oven (325F) to dry while I made up the sauce, which improved it nicely. Salt and pepper were added before serving.

For the sauce, I made drawn butter with parsley per the instructions on the following page:

To Make Drawn Butter.---TAKE a teacup full of butter and rub into it a half a table spoonful of flour, or the starch which is made for puddings, then pour upon it about a teacup full of boiling water, stirring it constantly. Set it upon the coals and let it boil up. If it is suffered to remain boiling it will become oily. Some persons prefer to add two or three spoonfuls of milk. When melted butter is used with boiled fowls, lamb, veal, or fresh fish, it is greatly improved by the addition of parsley. Tie a few sprigs together with a thread, and throw them into boiling water two or three minutes, then take them out, and cut them fine and add to the butter.

I made the mistake of chopping the parsley first, but saved it by use of a tea strainer. The boiling water turned faintly green as a result, but the parsley did not visually change much. Meanwhile, I took 4oz of unsalted butter, rubbed it over 1/2 Tbsp flour, and set it on the stove with 4 oz boiling water. I stirred the butter together, allowing it to come up to a boil once, then stirred in the parsley. I found the sauce greatly improved by a pinch of salt (it was pretty insipid without this addition); I really need to remember to use salted butter in these sorts of things in the first place. I did not mash the chicken liver for inclusion in the butter, because I didn't particularly want to.

Overall, I found this dish perfectly palatable. Compared to the last time I boiled chicken, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it turned out. I think the drying the chicken in the oven really added something to it--though the shorter boiling time may also have played a role. The butter and parsley was quite tasty on the meat and both vegetables (once that salt was added), and the whole cooking process felt less onerous than it seemed like it should. I certainly have a high opinion of boiled chicken than I did after the last receipt.

First Pair of Stockings

And my first pair of stockings on the Auto-knitter. I used the 80 cylinder, no ribber, and 4 oz of pale blue Jaegerspun fingering weight that I found in a thrift-store grab bag. The gauge was a bit off from my swatch, so I ended up cutting down the top of stocking #1, reducing the row-count on stocking #2, and subbing in a second yarn for the toe of the second stocking.

Historical accuracy on this piece is a bit...complicated. The use of a hem-top is recommended for wool stockings in the 1850s literature. However, the short-row heel is a 20th century standard for csm stockings. These stockings further differ from a handknit 1850s stocking in the heel shape, the lack of a back seam (ie, a purl stitch worked at the center back in opposite rows), and the manner of in which the leg is shaped (tension changes rather than reducing the number of stitches). However, circular knitting machines did exist in my target time of the late 1850s and early 1860s, used commercially and sometimes in the home. Like mine, these machines knit stocking without adding/reducing stitching and with no back seam. However, I haven't found pre-1868 instructions for a csm which use stitch tension to shape the leg, or knit the heel on the machine; instead, c.1860 machines produce only straight tubes, which need to be hand-finished at the band, and cut/sewn to shape the heel and foot. There is no leg shaping, and different sizes are achieved by removing needles to make mock ribs.

Which is a round-about way of saying that I have some lovely 1920s-to-present style basic stockings, which are slightly anachronistic for the 1850s/1860s in their heel/foot shaping techniques, and in the variable tension used to get a good fit through the leg (which is ok by ~1868). I'll be using them for earlier anyway, because this is my only option to get knit stockings that fit my legs comfortably, and the anachronistic elements are all well-covered by my shoes. I do have some ideas for making more accurate-to-the-1850s stockings on this machine, but it will involve mastering some more complicated heel variations. And manually making the seam.

Straw Mattress

I've wanted to try a historic mattress for a few years, and finally had the chance to experiment this last summer. The results were mixed, but I'm glad I had the chance to try it.

Starting from my previous research, I had hoped to fill the mattress with some wool fleece seconds, but was unable to local any local sources for wool (much less at an affordable price). I realized straw was going to be the only option--which was unfortunate, since straw mattresses in my reading have largely been hard base layers for supporting a softer horsehair or wool/flock mattress. I decided the closest I could get at this point was a less-than-board-stiff straw mattress, with my wool sleeping mat (ie, four layers of HBC blanketing sewn together into a 3/4" thick piece) as a thin substitute for a wool mattress above the straw.

The Workwoman's Guide doesn't give straw mattress instructions, as the author states that such items are only made commercially--though she mentions that they are sewn on frames and the straw is packed tight. I took the Guide's general mattress instructions along with an 1859 'how to' story from Godey's as my plan for sewing the mattress (even though these call for horsehair/wool and cotton respectively).

I cut out two rectangular pieces of ticking, 2.5" longer per side than my desired mattress size, and a strip 2 nails (4.5") wide for the sides. I sewed one side of the the strip all around one of the rectangles, and the other side around the other rectangle, leaving a section about 12" open at the end. I then proceeded to stuff ~25 pounds of straw into the mattress, pulling handfuls off of a straw bale. When the mattress was full but seemingly not compacted, I whip-stitched the open seam closed.

One ticking mattress.

 The end result looks like a giant, heavy, striped pillow. I had intended to do the tying, hoping that would keep the straw better in place, but gave up when I couldn't locate my trapunto needle. Despite the sides being only 4" tall after seam allowances (and me trying not to over-stuff the ticking), the mattress ranged up to 10" or so in thickness, and I don't have any needles that could hope to pierce that. My backup plan (shaking the mattress well, then sleeping on it at one event to flatten it out) didn't exactly go to plan. 

To imitate the layers of a historic mattress system, I used this straw mattress as the lowest layer. Over it was the aforementioned wool pad, with the lower sheet tucked around both. The upper sheet went above this, followed by two wool blankets, a wool/cotton coverlet (a special run from Family Heirloom Weavers that I found at The Button Baron). I used a small feather pillow with a homemade cotton case, and (despite it being May/August), threw my heavy wool broadcloth cloak over the lot.

Finished with seven layers of wool and two of linen.
The 8th layer of wool made all the difference.

I ended up using this mattress for a total of 5 nights over the summer. It was distinctly more comfortable than sleeping directly on the ground with only blankets (+/- a pile of petticoats), but less comfortable than literally any other surface I've tried sleeping on.

Reclining on the mattress is fine, but trying to actually sleep revealed a wildly uneven straw distribution: it sloped from head to foot, with several hard mounds that no amount of fluffing/shaking/beating/etc could even out. I frequently felt I was sliding off of the mattress, and even when I managed to get into a 'stable' position, I'd find a hard lump somewhere on the mattress (generally digging into my side). The last day I slept on this mattress, I woke up with a really sore shoulder that severely curtailed my activities for the day (in fairness, the condition started several days prior, it just got a whole lot worse after two nights camping).

The thing that really worked about this set-up was the insulation. Even when it was pouring rain, the straw+wool sleeping surface kept me warm and dry. It also meant that when I eventually did fall asleep, I wasn't waking up periodically from the cold (once I'd figured out to add a cloak over my blankets).

From the proportion of the straw bale used, I estimate that this mattress clocked in at 20-30lbs. Moving it felt like more. The size and lack of hand-holds made it obnoxious to carry further than a few feet, and painful to grip. It also developed a distinct musty smell after 3 months, especially during the 3 weeks it was set up in a tent in a field and not shoved in my storage closet. The mattress also took up half my car's cargo space, which isn't ideal for reenactment scenarios where I need to be setting up a camp for 1-2 days, then taking everything home again.

My current verdict is that the experience of sleeping on this mattress was not worth the hassle of carting it around and setting it up. Also, my days of curling up with some blankets directly on the ground are over. I wouldn't be adverse to trying another historical mattress in the future, but to do so I will need to source better filling, and use better approximations of all the layers. I think a second proper mattress, stuffed with cotton or wool, over this straw one would have made a notable difference. If I was remaking this particular mattress as a bottom layer, I would focus on breaking up the straw more as I stuffed the mattress; getting the straw distributed more evenly; and sewing it all into place. 

Woven garters

I intended these woven garters for 16th century use, though the pattern's actually taken from a later (albeit undated, American) antique band in Handwoven Tape. Two-tone checkerboard pattern, repeated once for a total of 24 warps. I used leftover wool yarn out of my stash, and hand-plied the finer green yarn to make it the same diameter as the white.

I put off posting these because I'm not really satisfied with the result. The tension was never quite where I wanted it, so I got less draw in, and wound up with wider garters than I can tie easily. And I made a mistake in the warp measurement, leaving the second garter almost 8" shorter than the calculated length, and making it very difficult to tie.

There's always some use for woven bands, so this project isn't a complete waste, but I really do need to get some workable garters for my pre-19th century attire.

Original: 1850s Pelerine

More inspirational outerwear. I really like the simple lines of this pelerine (though I'd describe it as more of a mantel), but also the delicacy of the trim.

 

Pelerine, c.1850s, at LACMA.