How Roast Chicken Sits Perfectly Between Masculine and Feminine.
Words by Katie Jablonski
Not much is more enticing than a roast chicken still warm from the oven. Crispy browned skin, lemon-scented tender flesh, whiffs of sage and rosemary, schmaltz covered garlic and potatoes nestled in the bottom of the pan. Ever since ovens entered American households, we have been roasting the humble bird on a frequent basis. As a child I remember stealing bits of hot chicken with my bare hands while my mother had her back turned. I would dip the hot chicken with crispy skin into the savory liquid pooled at the bottom of the pan, those bites were better than any piece of chicken I ever ate off of a plate. The act of roasting a chicken takes long enough to prepare that it conveys effort and love, but not so long as to be inefficient for a working person on a weekly basis. Although the concept of using food to woo a man by demonstrating the ideal attributes of a “good wife” is outdated, the roast chicken represents the perfect food to exchange for a ring because it bridges the gap between feminine and masculine.
The legend of the “engagement chicken” is that in the 1980’s Kimberly Bonnel, an editor at Glamour gave the perfect roast chicken recipe to Kathy Suder, her assistant, who was stressing over what to cook for her boyfriend that evening. Suder used the recipe and won a proposal of marriage. After that, multiple women in the Glamour offices used the chicken recipe to lure boyfriends into proposals. The magazine perpetuated the legend in the 2011 cookbook “100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know: Engagement Chicken and 99 Other Fabulous Dishes to Get You Everything You Want in Life” which included the chicken, as well as other dishes like,
“Complexion Soup” or “Bikini Season Baked Salmon”. While the gendered view of marriage associated with the “engagement chicken” has fallen out of favor in recent years, as women have demanded respect and independence not just marriage, there are still women who claim to have benefitted from the recipe’s powers. The “engagement chicken” is effective for several reasons. The bird has multiple cuts, light and dark meat and the option of skin or no skin. Preparing the chicken does not require sophisticated techniques or fancy ingredients. The reason for the common utterance “tastes like chicken” is that in American culture chicken is nothing if not ultimately familiar.
The chicken itself sits between the two opposing genders. Unlike a cow or a pig, a whole chicken can be cooked for one evening. This means the whole animal is available for consumption upon sitting down at the table, offering a variety of cuts, not just a single cut as with a meal centered around beef or pork. The whole bird has both light and dark meat, areas that contain more fat and areas that contain virtually no fat, fatty skin can easily be removed, or an eater can choose a part of the animal that has a high skin to meat ratio such as a wing. If the eater is voracious a whole bird can be consumed in one evening, but the chicken also holds over to the next day making it a sensible weekly dish with the possibility of leftovers. A family of four could easily be satisfied by sharing one chicken with sides, which showcases the additional domestic possibility of children. Compared to red meats the chicken is regarded as relatively healthy, a positive for long term and frequent ingesting. However, it is not as healthy as say a steamed piece of fish, which would fall too far into the feminine side. It is also not too masculine as say a barbequed ribeye steak which would satisfy the man but not demonstrate any feminine attributes.
The way a roast chicken is consumed could also be divided along traditional views of masculine and feminine. The woman can consume the chicken breast, the least fatty most “healthy” portion of the chicken. Additionally, the skin can be removed from the breast making it even more calorie light. There are countless diets that rely on the preparation of the “boneless skinless chicken breast” as the best protein to eat to lose weight. The breast would also most likely be eaten with knife and fork, which would be considered the more “lady-like” way to consume food. Similar to a piece of fish, the eating of a boneless skinless chicken breast can be done “with restraint, in small mouthfuls, chewed gently” which as Bourdieu notes contradicts the masculine way of eating. With a whole chicken the man can eat the fattier portions of the meat, thighs and wings and choose to not remove the skin adhering to the masculine forms of eating. The wings can be eaten using hands rather than fork and knife. When roasted long enough the chicken wings can even be snapped off from the larger bird using your hands. Gravy prepared using the pan drippings is served separate allowing everyone to decide whether or not they add the delicious but calorie heavy topping.
The preparation of the chicken can also be seen as nestled between the two opposing views of the types of cooking men and women should be responsible for. Stereotypically, men should cook over a roaring fire, preferably outdoors to demonstrate a caveman-like masculinity. In the household however, the woman is responsible for the lion’s share of domestic work including cooking in the kitchen. Even today, women still perform a larger share of domestic work than men. Women report doing housework and child rearing duties for an average of 1.59 hours a day compared to men’s 1.26 even when both partners are working. However, the responsibility for cooking only applies to women within the domestic sphere, 77.6% of professional chefs and head cooks are male. This separates along gender the type of cooking that is expected of men and women. Men are professional cooks preparing a high level of food not for the everyday, while women should prepare simple, comforting dishes for the family on a daily basis. Roasted chicken is made using fire (masculine) but it is an oven fire, less intense and inside the domestic space of the kitchen (feminine). The chicken thus sits on the domestic side of cooking that is attributed to women. The chicken is prepared in a way that appeals to the man but does not infringe on his male space of an outdoor barbeque or inside a professional kitchen.
There are practical reasons that the chicken succeeds in this area as well. Compared to other protein options, a roast chicken is fairly easy to cook. There is no risk of letting the chicken move past medium-rare into overdone, the chicken is one temperature, taken easily with a thermometer and even if slightly overcooked it is not as noticeable as an overdone steak. The chicken itself, and the ingredients spelled out in the “engagement chicken” (lemon, herbs, oil, salt and pepper) can be found at virtually any local store and are not cost-prohibitive. Chicken is mostly universally liked; besides the occasional vegetarian most eaters would probably not take issue with being served chicken. Additionally, vegetarianism would traditionally be considered feminine. One vegetarian woman said she used the engagement chicken to demonstrate to her eventual husband her “ability to feed him, and eventually our future children,” by preparing meat, despite her vegetarianism. This idea of a woman still being required to cook food she herself does not eat is obviously absurd, but at the same time she felt the need to demonstrate domesticity despite her own eating preferences.
Today this recipe may not represent what it did when it was originally introduced in the 1980’s. Marriage is no longer considered a woman’s singular goal and it would be deemed misogynistic if a magazine ran a recipe for engagement chicken in 2020. In 2013, Stephanie Smith started a blog called “300 Sandwiches” where she chronicled her adventure of making 300 distinct sandwiches for her boyfriend who promised to propose on the 300th. Smith was written about in multiple places and generally ripped apart on the internet for the regressive and anti-feminist nature of the arrangement. The “engagement chicken” would face a similar scrutiny from the women of today. The recipe was clearly originally marketed to only heterosexual relationships and ignored queer couples, another slight which would likely face criticism today. Furthermore, the promise of the chicken rested in a relationship in which the woman was waiting for a proposal from the man, not the other way around, a practice which is gaining popularity. This recipe, and Glamour’s audience, would most likely skew white and female and probably middle to upper-middle class. While this recipe may no longer have a place in today’s world, the masculine and feminine hybrid of the chicken made it a successful recipe for engagement when it originally debuted.
Katie is a current first-year Food Studies MA and line cook living in far west Texas, who also farms grapes and makes wine with her husband for their label Alta Marfa.