Hey Phil, I rememeber me dad used to boil up a chicken for hours on end and make a soup out of it with lentils, carrots, celery and onions, and it was delicous. He used to say he had an "old boiler". I presume that the bird was much older than your average chicken of today which is approximately 35 days old when it goes for slaughter.
Yes, that last statistic is somewhat horrific (as is the number of birds slaughtered each day just for use by KFC alone). But in China, soup is still made (in the countryside, at least), from aged hens, and that soup is out of this world. Incidentally, I wonder whether your dad did say "an old boiler" and not "an old broiler" : you can, in some places in the U.K., still get "broiler fowl" to this day.
Years and years ago, chicken was a real treat. You couldn't buy skinless chicken breast, or legs....you could only buy chicken, with the head on and the giblets inside..................them were't days.
Ah, giblets : where /do/ they go these days ? If you are lucky, you still get them in your Christmas turkey, but otherwise ? Gone the same way as "Home and Colonial", more's the pity. There is still a butcher's shop in Tunbridge Wells where you can buy them (separately, and quite cheaply) but why are they no longer inside the chickens we buy ? For me, they were an essential ingredient of the chicken gravy to accompany the roast, and were also a special treat to be eaten at the end of the meal ...
** Phil.