French chickens are lean, yellow birds – they’re fed on corn and their breasts dip inward at the sternum. English chickens are fat white things. Their necks are severed right at the base and the spare skin gets tucked beneath the spine when they’re packed. French butchers remove their birds’ feathered heads but leave you with the neck. They truss them differently, too – sewing through the thighs and into the chest.
My mother used to buy bags of chicken necks from the kosher butcher and boil them for stock. When it was done, she’d let me suck the cooked vertebrae clean.