Hello from Hazard!
We knew it! We just knew somewhere out there in F&D land, one of our readers would know what Item No. 119 was. And we were right. In fact, more than one of you knew exactly what it was: a mold, of press, for making mock chicken legs, or “city chicken.”
We first heard from Randy Winland, of Prospect, Ohio, who says he’s even used the one he has in his collection.
And Tim Schmidt, of Massillon, Ohio, used one of these when he first started as a meat cutter. “We would grind different types of meat and then this was used as a mold to form mock chicken legs. We would stick a wooden skewer into the hole in the end. Then we would take it out of the mold and roll it in any type of bread crumbs to finish it off.”
R. Bruce Killian, of Carrollton, Ohio, also worked in a neighborhood market years ago in Akron and used a little tool like this to make “city chicken legs.”
“They sold well,” he adds!
Dean Kashella, Luthersburg, Pennsylvania, writes that his father had one years ago for making mock chicken legs. He even did a quick online search and found a photo of our tool in use, accompanied with an old and new recipe.
(By the way, our curiosity got the best of us and we had to look up where Luthersburg, Pa., is located. It’s in Clearfield County, between Brookville and Clearfield, if you’re curious, too.)
Thanks to Randy, Tim, Bruce and Dean, our mystery is solved for Karen Barron, of Pullman, Washington.
Item No. 1120: John Parks, of Steubenville, Ohio, bought this item at an auction, but has no clue how it is used. (Here we go again! Can you guys go 2-for-2?)
If you know how this was used, please email us at editorial@farmanddairy.com; or respond by mail to: Hazard a Guess, c/o Farm and Dairy, P.O. Box 38, Salem, OH 44460.
