Page:The Boston cooking-school cook book (1910).djvu/292

 CHAPTER XVII

POULTRY AND GAME

Poultry includes all domestic birds suitable for food except pigeon and squab. Examples: chicken, fowl, turkey, duck, goose, etc. Game includes such birds and animals suitable for food as are pursued and taken in field and forest. Examples: quail, partridge, wild duck, plover, deer, etc.

The flesh of chicken, fowl, and turkey has much shorter fibre than that of ruminating animals, and is not intermingled with fat,—the fat always being found in layers directly under the skin, and surrounding the intestines. Chicken, fowl, and turkey are nutritious, and chicken is specially easy of digestion. The white meat found on breast and wing is more readily digested than the dark meat. The legs, on account of constant motion, are of a coarser fibre and darker color.

Since incubators have been so much used for hatching chickens, small birds suitable for broiling may be always found in market. Chickens which appear in market during January weighing about one and one-half pounds are called spring chickens.

Fowl is found in market throughout the year, but is at its best from March until June.

Philadelphia, until recently, furnished our market with Philadelphia chickens and capons, but now Massachusetts furnishes equally good ones, which are found in market from December to June. They are very large, plump, and superior eating. At an early age they are deprived of the organs of reproduction, penned, and specially fatted for killing.