At Cooks' Guild I decided "To boile Chickins" from The Good huswifes Iewell, mostly because I was looking for something in which to use sorrel, as I had a bunch growing.
Straune your broth into a pipkin, & put in your Chickins, and skumme them as cleane as you can, and put in a peece of butter, and a good deale of Sorell, and so let them boyle, and put in all manner of spices, and a lyttle veriuyce pycke, and a fewe Barberies, and cutte a Lemman in pecces, and scrape a little Suger uppon them, and laye them vppon the Chickins when you serue them vp, and lay soppes vpon the dish.
I started by warming up some chicken broth and then added a game hen (I didn't feel the need to cook a whole chicken for an experiment). No scumming needed. I omitted the butter, both because modern chickens are fattier than their Elizabethan counterparts and Gundormr wanted to be able to eat it. I added a little salt.
Then I gathered almost all the sorrel, which turned out to be about 2 oz. This was about 1 1/2 cups of packed chiffonade. I added it to the bird & broth. Then I added 1 tsp. cinnamon and 1/2 tsp. ginger because those were the spices called for in "To dresse Chickins upon Sorrell sops" from A.W.'s A Book of Cookrye. And a Tbsp. of verjuice.
I was unclear what "veriuyce pycke" meant. Maggie Black, in her modernization, had something like "and a little verjuice. Pick a few barberries", but that just didn't seem right.
Next, the barberries. I know they're sold dried at middle eastern markets, but not around where I am and I didn't have a chance to wander further afield. Jerusalem: A Cookbook recommended substituting dried sour cherries or dried currants refreshed in lemon juice. However, references in Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book and Food & Drink in Britain both suggested that barberries were used fresh. I thawed some of our sour cherries and threw them into the broth when the chicken was almost done.
I had left out some slices of bread overnight and now I trimmed off the crusts and laid them in a pretty dish. I cut the bird in half for easier serving and put it on the sippets, then ladled some broth over, making sure to get as much of the sorrel and cherries as possible. Then I cut about half a lemon into thin slices, sprinkled them with sugar and laid them all over the bird.
Next time I think I would chop the sorrel even finer and cook the chicken and sorrel in the broth, then remove the bird when done. Cook the broth down a bit more and then add the spices, verjuice, and barberries, since they didn't seem to flavor the chicken any and there was a lot of extra broth (and there'd be more if I was trying to cook an actual chicken). Next time the sorrel grows. Maybe I can even acquire barberries by then.