The Cornish Game Hen Is a Tiny Liar
The truth behind the decades-old trend of the Cornish game hen.
From the way the Cornish game hen is named and marketed, you might be forgiven for jumping to a few conclusions. You might see the word “game” and assume this is a game bird, like a pheasant or a guinea hen. This would be wrong. You might see the word “hen” and assume this is a female bird. This has a 50 percent chance of being wrong. In fact the only part of the bird’s name that isn’t a complete lie is the word “Cornish,” which is merely a partial lie. So what the hell is this thing?
The Cornish game hen was first bred, according to legend, by Tea Makowsky, who fled the Nazis and settled in Connecticut. (An SF Gate obituary provides some more biographical information about her.) After a fire destroyed her farm in 1949, Makowsky began cross-breeding chickens to try to come up with a bird that matures quickly, with a special eye towards the breast meat.
What she came up with was a combination of the Cornish chicken – at the time the most popular breed in the world for broiler (read: regular) chickens – as well as a couple of other breeds like the White Plymouth Rock hen and the Malayn fighting cock. (Sometimes a bird like this is called a “Rock Cornish game hen.”) These combinations gave her a chicken that grew gigantic breasts extremely quickly. In less than five weeks, the chicken was ready to be slaughtered, and, exotically, served one bird per diner. By the 1950s, the Cornish game hen was fabulously popular.
The USDA currently has a very minimal definition of the Cornish game hen; any chicken between one and two pounds in weight, slaughtered at fewer than five weeks of age, and of either sex can be labeled as a Cornish game hen. Because of the murky breeding history of the Cornish chicken breed, the USDA threw out any requirements that a chicken labeled “Cornish game hen” actually have Cornish chicken heritage. That said, because the Cornish chicken remains such a popular breed, and because it’s likely that most chickens in this country have some Cornish heritage, it is also likely that the Cornish game hen is, at least a little bit, Cornish.
The Cornish game hen still commands a higher price per pound than regular broiler or fryer chickens, partly due no doubt to its decades-old reputation as an exotic new fowl.
It is not exotic or new. The Cornish game hen is a lie.
It is a small chicken.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].The Cornish Game Hen Is a Tiny Liar
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
March 16, 2016
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
Check your facts, there are still plenty of actual cornish chickens being farmed. You write an article for a “modern” audience who may think your assessment is accurate. Couldn’t be more wrong if you tried, look up the actual cornish game chicken…. it is not the hybrid lie of a chicken you suggest. I’ve raised and shown birds my whole life and currently raise actual cornish chickens. They are a far cry from your remarks. The actual betrayal is this article, not the chicken. Thank you.
Very odd article that proves someone that did all their research in a chair. I raise Cornish cross chickens, just processed a bunch at 12 weeks, they weighed from 8.8 lbs to 16.8 lbs. at 2-4 weeks they would be the proper size for cornish game hens. They are expensive because processing such tiny birds is not easy or cheap, you get all the expense of buying chicks, $2.80 to $4.00 each, putting them under a heat lamp for 100 degrees they need, and the special high protein food for starter rations at $19.95 a bag. Wrapped up in only… Read more »
“It is a small chicken.” The breed of chicken is not small, nor anything is does resemble small, I have a small farm with mix breeds of chickens and couple of turkeys, the cornish rooster i have, weighs more then my turkeys and at slaughter age which is 6 weeks or so pending, they weigh as much or a full adult leghorns. Also depending on the brand of cornish cross meat you buy, could determined if your eating a rooster or hen. You have mix information here and some are incorrect. Perhaps you should own a flock of these birds… Read more »
What is the opening called …in a Cornish hen that you stuff .. called ?
I just like them because they’re cute.