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Fried Chicken (Separate two young chickens)
Separate two young chickens in pieces for serving; dip in milk, sprinkle with salt, pepper and dredge with flour, or dip in crumbs, egg and crumbs and fry in deep hot Cottolene. Cottolene should not be too hot the latter half of cooking chicken. Drain on brown paper; serve on hot buttered toast with Béchamel Sauce. Double the recipe for Béchamel Sauce (see Page 85.)
A straightforward deep-fried chicken, but the instruction that matters is the one about heat: the fat starts hot and finishes cooler. That two-stage frying is what lets bone-in pieces cook through without the crust burning.
- CottoleneA branded cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company, long discontinued. Any neutral high-smoke-point fat works — peanut, canola or a solid vegetable shortening.
- Fat temperatureStart around 350–360F to set the crust, then drop to roughly 300–325F for the second half, as the recipe directs. Held at the higher temperature throughout, the coating darkens well before the thigh joint is done.
- Young chickensTwo birds of about 2 to 2½ lb each — modern broiler-fryers, or a single 4 lb chicken cut into eight or ten pieces. A supermarket roaster is too large and too thick for this method.
- DonenessFry to 165F at the thickest part of the thigh, near but not touching the bone. Expect 12–18 minutes depending on piece size; breasts come out before legs and thighs.
- Two coatingsThe recipe offers a milk-and-flour dredge or a full crumb–egg–crumb breading. The flour dredge gives a thinner, crisper skin; the crumb version is closer to a cutlet and browns faster, so watch it at the lower temperature.
- DrainingBrown paper was the period's paper towel. Use a wire rack over a sheet pan instead — paper of any kind traps steam and softens the bottom crust.
- BéchamelThe recipe sends you to the book's Béchamel on page 85, which is not reproduced here, and asks for it doubled. A doubled white sauce of the usual sort would come to roughly 2 cups finished.
- YieldTwo small chickens with toast and sauce will serve six comfortably, or four generously.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was published by the N. K. Fairbank Company to promote Cottolene, its cottonseed-oil shortening, which is why the brand name appears in the instructions where a modern book would simply say fat. Cottonseed oil was a byproduct of the Southern cotton industry that manufacturers spent the late nineteenth century persuading cooks to accept as a substitute for lard, and cookbooks given away or sold cheaply by the makers were one vehicle for that campaign. The dish itself is unremarkable American fried chicken, but the treatment is notably genteel: instead of being piled on a platter, the pieces are set on buttered toast and masked with béchamel, a French sauce that signalled a proper Sunday table.