The Colombian Exchange: The Chicken
“Tastes like chicken” has a lot of comic mileage because nearly everyone on the planet is familiar with the fowl. Chicken is on most any menu anywhere (except, of course, at plant-based restaurants, though plenty offer items that, um, taste like chicken). The largest meat cooking section in most general cookbooks is of recipes for chicken. And according to one grocer I know, “skinless, boneless chicken breast is the country’s most popular (animal) protein sold.”
Even so, in a strange culinary roundabout, we’ve engineered most chicken, especially those skinless, boneless breasts, to taste like not much anything at all, much less chicken. Chicken meat has become the tofu of the animal protein diet, designed to carry other flavors while possessing little of its own.
Because chicken is so present to us, on our home plates and when dining out, we assume it’s always just been there. But in North America, the domesticated chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is late to the party, having arrived here post-Columbus. Some science places a Polynesian chicken-like bird in South America, or at least on Easter Island, prior to 1492, but no indigenous chicken bones have been found in North America that could be dated to before then.
So, the chicken that we know is part of the Columbian Exchange, that vast interchange of foodstuffs between the New World and the Old World, in this case in a westerly direction—so west that it begins in the Far East. Most hen genealogists suggest that our Gallus gallus domesticus traces back to the Indian subcontinent, through Persia, Greece and then into the Roman Empire. (A separate line of chicken originated several millennia B.C. in Thailand, from the wild jungle fowl. For the most part, it disbursed itself into ancient, and now modern, China.)
The history of the chicken is interesting, from a cook’s point of view. For the most part, it was not much a food in Europe and the West, not until the 19th century. Prior to that, other fowl—pheasant, duck and goose, dove, even swan—were preferred for eating, all through Asia and Rome, during Europe’s Middle Ages, and into the era of the New World.
The rooster and the hen (and her eggs) played other roles in peoples’ lives: decorative, ceremonial, augural, and very much for purposes of entertainment and gaming. The role of the rooster in everyday life, apart from those few chosen to fight, was largely for what he told his humans about time or threat.
When, in the modern age, we got ahold of Gallus gallus domesticus, we couldn’t wait to fiddle with it. We prized its white over its dark meat, and the more of the former the better, so we developed battery farming aimed at big breasts, rapid egging, and speedy growth. We in the U.S. consume close to 110 pounds of poultry per person per year; only the Israelis top us at 132 pounds.
It’s interesting that the chicken is an omnivore like we are (or may choose to be). However, for our part and by and large, we have bred the chicken into tastelessness for ourselves. Of course, and of late, some farmers breed and sell savory exceptions.
For a cook, chicken may not be in every pot, but it is very common, isn’t it? A roast chicken is the epitome of simple, unadorned perfection, but little other meat is as useful for the conveyance of variability of flavor and we praise it so. Its very names at the butcher counter tell us about its several hats: fryer, broiler, roaster, stewing hen. (Interestingly, these are also code for age, from youngest to oldest respectively.)
Learning how to cut up a whole chicken (it’s very simple, really) saves money and makes handy for the kitchen more of its parts for extended food preparation such as base stock or nibble bits. Remember to use separate cutting boards for fowl and vegetable prep, or clean well in between the one board that you do use.