28 BULLETIN 467, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



SUMMARY. 



Chicken is by far the most common kind of poultry in the United 

 States, but capon, turkey, duck, goose, and squab are also often 

 used for food, while guinea fowl, pheasant, pigeon, quail, and par- 

 tridge are fairly well known. In all of them table quality depends 

 primarily on tenderness and flavor, and these, in turn, are influenced 

 by age, sex, exercise, food, and care. Freshness is also an important 

 factor, but this is not merely a question of how long a bird has been 

 dead, but rather of how far developed are the chemical and bacte- 

 riological changes which, when they are carried too far, cause what 

 we call spoiling or decomposition in the meat. The microorganisms 

 which cause dangerous changes are likely to be introduced by care- 

 less and dirty handling, and for this reason cleanliness should be 

 insisted on. The changes take place most rapidly in the presence of 

 warmth and moisture. Hence cleanliness, cold, and dryness are at 

 the bottom of all the methods of caring for poultry on the farm, in the 

 warehouse, at the market, and in the home. 



The methods of cooking poultry are, in general, the same as those 

 for other kinds of meat. The tougher the bird, the more cooking 

 will be needed to make it tender and easily digested, and the larger 

 it is, the more heat will be required to cook it thoroughly. Canned 

 and potted poultry are prepared in much the same way as freshly 

 cooked dishes, then sterilized and sealed, and when properly put up 

 do not differ essentially in food value from similar fresh foods. 



As regards composition, poultry does not differ as much as is com- 

 monly supposed from other meats. Individual kinds and specimens, 

 of course, vary in the relative amounts of inedible material or of pro- 

 tein and fat contained, and there are certain flavors present in poul- 

 try which differ from those in other meats ; but these differences are 

 not important in ordinary diet. The difference in digestibility 

 between poultry and other meats or between various kinds of poul- 

 try is very slight. The latter probably depends largely on the amount 

 of fat contained, the fatter sorts being, perhaps, less easily digested, 

 but the distinctions are unimportant for healthy persons. 



The relative cost of different kinds of poultry depends primarily 

 on the price, but also on the proportion of edible to inedible material 

 and the thoroughness with which the edible portions can be utilized. 

 Well-grown birds with good-sized masses of moderately fat flesh are 

 more economical than either young or over-fattened ones. At ordi- 

 nary retail prices, full-grown chicken is the only poultry which com- 

 pares in real economy with the cheaper cuts of beef and pork, but 

 young chicken, medium-sized turkey, goose, and guinea fowl are 

 often as economical as the more expensive grades of other meats. 

 Wheu the birds can be obtained for little more than the cost of care 

 and feeding, as sometimes happens on farms, they are, of course, 



