Have you ever tried to skin and truss a fowl?

Fifty years ago, everyone knew the difference between a chicken's gall bladder and its liver. The Advanced Commonsense Cookbook (1948) took the knowledge for granted.

Nowadays, if you want to eat chicken, it's much cheaper than it was a generation ago, and so easy. You simply go down to the supermarket after 7 pm and get one at half price that's been dropped, shocked, plucked, cleaned, trussed andtrucked and cooked. No mess, no fuss - and you don't even have to meet the servants! How commonsense has developed!

This piece is a sort of history of church music. From plainsong to parallel fifths, then a round, then three parts (with one stationary for tension), finishing up with a bit of finger snappin' jazz.

----------------------------------

"Poultry.

In order to clean and truss a fowl correctly,
the following steps should be taken.
One: Pluck and singe the fowl.
Two: Cut the skin down the back about three inches, and remove the neck, as close to the shoulder as possible. Then with the fingers, loosen all organs at that end of bird.
Three: take out the crop.
Four: Turn the bird around, and make an opening just below the vent, about one and a half inches across.
Five: Loosen all the organs, and draw out the inside, being careful not to break the gall bladder, which adheres to the liver.
Six: With a cloth dipped in hot water,
wipe the fowl out and then dry.
Seven: Cut the skin of the leg through,
and with a skewer draw the sinews out.
Make this opening half an inch below the knee joint.
Eight: Cut the legs off.
... Before being used for gravy or broth, the giblets are scalded and the skin scrapped off.

To clean the gizzard cut it half way round.
Remove the inner lining and its contents,
and soak in cold salt water thirty minutes.
A -hen.