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Fritot of Chicken
Cut up a young chicken (raw), put it in a bowl with salt, pepper, two spoonfuls of olive oil, juice of a lemon; let it stand for an hour; add two raw eggs, two spoons of flour; mix all well together. Fry in lard, not too hot, for ten or twelve minutes. Serve with orange or tomato sauce. -Miss Winnifred Stuart.
A marinated, batter-coated fried chicken in the French friture style. The one thing the original leaves out is the only thing that matters: the pieces must reach 165F inside, and ten minutes will not do it for bone-in thighs.
- Doneness before timingTen to twelve minutes suits small boneless pieces or a genuinely young bird jointed small. Bone-in legs and thighs from a modern 4 lb chicken need 15-20 minutes at a moderate frying heat, and an instant-read thermometer should show 165F at the bone.
- "Not too hot"A moderate frying heat, not a fierce one. Hotter and the egg-and-flour coating colours before the meat is through; cooler and it absorbs fat and slides off. Fry in batches so the fat does not cool too far.
- A young chickenIn the period sense this meant a spring bird of roughly 1.5-2.5 lb, tender enough for a short fry. Use a 3-4 lb chicken cut into eight or ten pieces, or substitute thighs cut in half through the bone.
- SpoonfulsRead these as tablespoons: two tablespoons oil, two tablespoons flour. The batter should coat rather than cling in a thick layer — more like a loose tempura than a dredge.
- The marinadeOil, lemon and seasoning for an hour is a proper marinade in the older sense, and an hour is enough. Longer in lemon juice and the surface of the meat turns opaque and firm before it ever sees the fat.
- LardAs the recipe specifies, and still good for this if you can get it, for its flavour and its tolerance of frying heat. Refined peanut or vegetable oil will do the job, though without the same flavour; butter will not.
- DrainingNothing is said about it. Lift onto a rack rather than paper so the underside does not steam soft, and salt while hot.
- YieldOne chicken serves three or four. The orange sauce was most likely a thin, sharp reduction rather than anything sweet; a tomato sauce is the easier partner today.
Fritot is a French kitchen term for meat or poultry marinated, coated in a light batter and fried, a close cousin of the fritter and of the Italian fritto. Marinating in oil and lemon before frying is the mark of the technique and separates it from plain dredged fried chicken; the acid seasons the surface and the oil helps the egg batter adhere. Its appearance in a community-style cookbook, signed by a contributor rather than an editor, suggests how far French terminology had filtered into middle-class household cooking -- the name carries prestige, but the method is within reach of anyone with a frying pan and a bowl. Sharp citrus sauces with poultry are the older tradition of the two suggested accompaniments, predating the general use of tomato sauce as a table sauce in English-speaking kitchens.