[Sca-cooks] Re: Period Fried Chicken

[Elise Fleming]

I wrote:
>Greetings.  The "Pickled Pullets" sounded tasty so I copied off the
>recipe.  Just read it this morning and now I have a question.  It
>says to set the chicken in a pickling of vinegar, salt, pepper,
>chibol and lemon peels and to let them steep.  Then the chicken is
>fried, and they are served with some of the pickle in which they
(as
>raw chickens) sat for a number of hours.  My question is... Is this
>safe?  Does that pickling really kill all the nasty raw chicken
>germs that we are warned about?  How come modern marinades, to
which
>you add vinegar and water, tell you to throw out the marinade and
>not re-use it?

Maggie MacD. responded:
>This marinade is added to the pan after the chicken has been cooked
and
>removed, and it deglazes the pan (as well as making a very tasty
>gravy).  Any of the nasty germs/microbes that COULD be in the
marinade are
>then very well cooked, just like the chicken.  You don't just toss
the
>marinade in the pan then toss it on the plate, it gets cooked for
several
>minutes. (Or at least, that's the way we did it at the feast).

Except that's what the original recipe says to do.  I didn't post
back into this thread after I read that the modern interpretation
said to boil up the marinade.  But there is no evidence in the
original recipe that one was to do that.  With subsequent posts in
later digests (I'm sort of behind!) it seems that it still might not
be a safe thing to do.  I suppose one could make up more marinade,
or reserve some of it prior to putting the chicken in.  I'm not
usually that fussy -- I drink quarts of egg nog at Christmas made
with raw egg white -- but I'm a little more worried about the dead
chicken.  Thank you all for your responses!

Alys Katharine