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Chicken Patties
To one-half pint of cream add half a pint of cold chicken; boil four minutes; fill the shells and serve. All poultry and game may be served in patties the same way.
Two lines of text and a great deal left unsaid. This is a leftovers formula from an era when every cook knew what a patty shell was and had cold roast fowl in the larder.
- The measurementsHalf a pint is one cup, so about 1 cup of cream and 1 cup of cooked chicken (the original measures the chicken by volume, not by weight). Cut it small enough to fill a shell neatly.
- "Cold chicken" means already cookedThis is the hinge. The chicken is leftover roast or boiled fowl, reheated in the cream. Four minutes at a boil will not cook raw chicken through, and raw poultry has no place in this recipe.
- The shellsPatty shells are baked puff-pastry cases; the frozen ones sold today serve the same purpose. Bake them empty and fill them shortly before serving, or the pastry softens.
- Boiling the cream is the thickeningThere is no flour or roux here; a few minutes at a hard boil reduces the cream enough to coat the chicken. A rich cream will do this better than a thin one. The original does not specify what strength of cream it means.
- Season itThe original specifies no seasoning. Salt and pepper, and perhaps nutmeg or a little lemon, are worth adding; unseasoned chicken in cream is very bland, so taste before filling.
- Keep the boil shortFour minutes is about right for the cream, but no longer already-cooked chicken held in simmering liquid turns stringy and dry.
- YieldSomewhat under two cups of filling once the cream has reduced -- enough for a few patty shells as a first course or light lunch dish.
Patties in this sense are petits pâtés small puff-pastry shells filled with a rich mixture, a form that English cookery takes from French practice. Turn-of-the-century American household books are full of such recipes because they solve a daily problem: a large roast fowl or a boiled hen fed a family once, and the remainder had to reappear on the table looking like a different dish. Such recipes are essentially a catalogue of ways to dress cold meat, which is why this entry ends by waving at "all poultry and game" the method mattered more than the bird. The brevity is also characteristic; these books were written for cooks who already knew how to make and bake a pastry case and needed only the proportions.