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Minced Chicken, and Poached Eggs
Cut up all the white meat of a roast or boiled fowl into mince or shreds, and put into a small stewpan, with a gravy-spoonful of Bechamel sauce; when about to send to table warm the mince, dish it up, and place the poached eggs round it with a scallop of glazed tongue or of ham, and a fried crouton of bread in between each egg; pour a little white sauce round the entrée, and serve.
A composed luncheon dish built from leftover roast fowl, written for a kitchen that already had béchamel and glaze standing by. The whole thing takes ten minutes once the components exist.
- The hinge: warm, do not cookThe chicken is already cooked; it needs only to be heated through in the sauce. Let it simmer and the shredded white meat turns stringy and dry.
- A gravy-spoonfulA large serving spoon, perhaps a tablespoon or two; the recipe calls for a single spoonful. Use enough béchamel to bind the mince without swamping it, adding it a little at a time.
- Béchamel vs. white sauceThe recipe uses both terms: béchamel to bind the mince, a 'white sauce' poured round the dish. Whether a second sauce was meant or simply the same béchamel loosened with a little more milk or stock is not stated; loosening the béchamel so it pools will serve.
- Glazed tongueOx tongue brushed with reduced meat glaze was a standard larder item. Thin scallops of good ham or prosciutto give the same salt-and-colour contrast; skip it rather than substitute deli turkey.
- CroutonsCut bread into triangles or rounds and fry in clarified butter until crisp and evenly gold. Do them last so they are still crisp when the plate reaches the table.
- Poaching the eggsBarely trembling water with a splash of vinegar, 3 minutes for a set white and liquid yolk. They can be poached ahead, slipped into cold water, and revived for 30 seconds in hot water while the mince warms.
- YieldThe recipe specifies no quantities. The white meat of a small roast chicken with four to six eggs would make a light main course for about four.
This is a leftover dish dressed up with the vocabulary of the professional kitchen — entrée, béchamel, glaze, croûton — so that Monday's cold fowl could appear at a proper table. Recipes of this type fill the poultry chapters of late-Victorian and Edwardian household books, which assumed a joint or bird was roasted whole and then worked through over several days; the white meat, being the most prized, was reserved for a dish like this while the legs and carcass went to soup or a curry. The arrangement of eggs, tongue and fried bread around a central mound is the standard garnish grammar of the period, passed into English domestic manuals through cooks trained in large houses.