My grandmother used to calling older hens "roasting hens." Usually cooked, or roasted them like a turkey. Also made homemade chicken/noodle soup with them. No French ingredients in them at all. Just good old home-cooking
Now as I age I do agree that the proper spices, as well as some smoke, can add a ton of flavor to most meats. For sure big old hens are edible as well as the roosters. A word of caution, you will find a different flavor to free-range chickens and it will ge very good. Another difference you will find is the amount of meat on those chickens. Used to butcher young of the year roosters every summer, more precisely, my mom did. The drumsticks of the wings were like the leg drumsticks of today's chickens.