Spit Boys, Hamster Wheels, and the American Dream: A Western History of the Rotisserie Chicken
- Poulet Rôti
- Feb 3, 2021
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 16, 2021
If you had the misfortune of being a small, impoverished boy in Medieval England whose family worked on the estate of a wealthy family, you may have been what was known as a “spit boy.” The origin of this tragic sobriquet is actually worse than whatever you are thinking. A spit boy was a young boy at the bottom of the food chain in the extremely hot and dangerous kitchen ecosystems of the era. His role was to simply and painstakingly turn an iron spit roasting large quantities of meat over an open fire. For protection from the heat, the lowly spit boy was allowed to stand behind a wet bale of hay as his hands became blistered and burned.
In the 16th century, the spit boy gave way to the turnspit, or vernepator cur, a small breed of dog (theorized by scholars to be the ancestor of the modern day Welsh Corgi) whose job description was equally as brutal as its predecessors. Turnspits were placed in a wooden wheel (like a hamster wheel) mounted to the wall and attached by chain to the roasting spit and commanded to run, and keep running, sometimes with a hot coal tossed in the wheel to encourage urgency and speed. Turnspits were owned by the working class, commonplace, short-statured, mangey, with a reportedly despondent disposition; all of which contributed to their status as a symbol of the proletariat. After centuries as man’s best laborer, turnspits became obsolete in the late 19th century, replaced by a simple wooden contraption.
The popularity of chicken in the United States shares a history similar to many foods which are, today, the culinary cornerstones of our society. In the Confederate South, enslaved Black people were forbidden from owning most livestock, save chicken which was unpopular in comparison to beef, lamb, pork, and native game. Chickens were therefore raised by slaves (many from West Africa were already experts) and used not only as sustenance for themselves, but also as bargaining tools and profitable commodities. Black people, both free and enslaved, began selling cooked chicken around the South, and became known as the “general chicken merchants”. At the same time, they began cooking chicken for their masters, changing the American palette one meal at a time. Subsequent immigrant populations, including the Chinese and the Jews, facilitated the growth in popularity of chicken, as did food insecurity, red meat rationing during wartime, economic depression, and urbanization.
By the 20th century, chicken was firmly embedded in the collective appetite of Americans, and in the 1950s, after the engineering of a quick-growing breed of chicken called the “broiler”, which required minimal feeding, the commercial boom of cheap, plentiful chicken as we now know it had officially arrived.
By the 1990s, chicken consumption surpassed beef consumption in America. Boston Market, known in the 90s as Chicken Market, introduced rotisserie chicken dinners to its drive-thru customers and in 1994, Costco and Kroger, two titans of the grocery industry, began selling fresh, hot rotisserie chickens in their chains. In 2017, Americans purchased 625 million rotisserie chickens from grocery stores, according to market-research firm Nielsen and Costco Wholesale Corp. The reasons for this national obsession are manifold. On a practical level, grocery store chickens are cheap. Costco has consistently kept their price point at 5 dollars, even losing money to do so. Costco deliberately keeps the cost low in order to encourage spending on other items and to foster long-term relationships with shoppers. With the main part of a meal costing only five dollars, a consumer is more likely to splurge on a good bottle of wine or on a couple of side dishes. As the diet culture of the 90s exploded, so did sales of the grocery store rotisserie chicken. They are healthy in comparison to other cheap options (fast food, instant ramen, frozen meals, etc.). They are enticing, warm, and their origins are often unlabeled, leaving a comforting, pressure-free ambiguity as to whether your dinner is cruelty free, hormone and antibiotic free, or free range.
There is also an emotional, almost spiritual aspect to our love for this food. Nancy Meyers once told Bon Appetit Magazine that roast chicken is the “good luck charm meal," in her movies, and that, "Ina Garten talks about Jeffrey's favorite meal being her roast chicken, so it must be a universal way to show love." It’s true, a steaming roast chicken being pulled out of the oven, the scent of rosemary and schmaltz wafting from the kitchen, generates a Norman Rockwell-esque nostalgia, comforting and rosy. But to what extent has this nostalgia been engendered by Hollywood, and for whom does this version of America exist? As Langston Hughes writes in “Let America be America Again,” “America was never America to me.”
Rockwell-esque nostalgia is too simplistic and exclusive a trope to apply in this situation, although some piece of the American dream is still at play when considering our consumption of the pre-made grocery store roast chicken. In 1841, Lydia Maria Child, an abolitionist, feminist novelist and activist published “The American Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those who are Not Afraid of Economy.” Part-cookbook, part housewife-manual, “The American Frugal Housewife” was extremely successful. In it, Child writes, “Make your own bread and cake. Some people think it is just as cheap to buy of the baker and confectioner; but it is not half as cheap. True, it is more convenient; and therefore the rich are justifiable in employing them; but those who are under the necessity of being economical, should make convenience a secondary object.” Here, Child illustrates a very stark class divide; the rich are able to employ convenience, the poor must take the hard route. 180 years later, society has hardly budged. And yet, I argue, the grocery store rotisserie chicken has indeed merged convenience and economy, to the extent that even Child herself might’ve recommended her readers to purchase their roast chickens at the store rather than preparing them from scratch. This democratization of convenience affords a small luxury to the American consumer.
History and politics aside, in addition to being nourishing, the duty of a good roast chicken is only to be delicious. Unlike their boneless, skinless counterparts, roast chickens are crispy, sticky, and succulent. They are blank canvases which are familiar to most cultures around the world. They are meant to be shared, torn apart, picked at and lingered over. Their bones make soup which soothes us. As Andrew Lawler and Jerry Adler wrote for Smithsonian Magazine, “When author Jack Canfield was looking for a metaphor for psychological comfort, he didn’t call it “Clam Chowder for the Soul.”” They are easy to cook (good butter, salt, and an oven are really all you need) and easier yet to pick up from the nearest grocery store. In the Covid era of homemade banana bread and sourdough loaves, a 2020 study by Acosta revealed that 55% of shoppers are cooking and eating at home more since the pandemic began, and they plan to continue this trend post-pandemic. I’d recommend Claire Saffitz’s “no fail lemon garlic roast chicken,” and personally, I like to tuck a few bunches of tarragon and thyme inside for good measure.
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