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Country Club Chicken
Wash 2 broilers or quite young chickens, cut them in halves or quarters if they be large enough, wipe them and dip each piece in beaten egg, well seasoned with salt and pepper and mixed with cream. Roll pieces in breadcrumbs and place them in Criscoed pan, dot generously with Crisco and place in hot oven for 15 minutes. Now put chicken in hot kettle, cover and let smother and steam for 30 minutes or until tender on a slow fire. Place chicken on hot platter; add half cup hot cream to gravy in kettle and strain it over chickens.
A two-stage method: crumb and brown the chicken in a hot oven, then finish it covered on the stovetop so the steam does the tenderizing. The book gives no quantities for the egg dip or the crumbs, so work by feel.
- Hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "hot oven" in period usage is generally taken as somewhere around 400–450°F. Fifteen minutes there is only to set the crumb and color it; the chicken will still be raw inside when it comes out.
- The kettle stage is the pointThe "hot kettle" is a heavy lidded pot on the stovetop, not a baked casserole. Preheat it, transfer the browned pieces in, cover tightly and hold over low heat so the chicken smothers in its own steam. Lifting the lid to check repeatedly defeats the whole method.
- BroilersA broiler in this period was a very young bird, generally around 1½–2½ lb. Two of today's smallest whole chickens, or about 4 lb of bone-in thighs and split breasts, stand in well; a modern 4–5 lb roaster is too large and its pieces will not cook through in 30 minutes.
- CriscoThis is a Procter & Gamble promotional book, hence the branded verb. Any solid vegetable shortening works, as does clarified butter if you accept a little browning; "dot generously" means enough fat that the crumbs fry rather than dry out.
- The egg dipFor two broilers, figure 2 eggs beaten with about ¼ cup cream, salted and peppered firmly. Dry breadcrumbs, not fresh, give the crust that survives the covered steaming.
- DonenessThirty minutes covered is usually right for small birds, but go by temperature: 165°F at the thickest part of the thigh, and juices running clear at the joint.
- The sauceThere will be very little liquid in the kettle. Scrape up the browned crumbs and fat, add the half cup of hot cream, simmer a moment to loosen everything, then strain. Warming the cream first keeps it from seizing in the hot pan.
- YieldServes four generously, with a plain starch and a green vegetable in the style of the book's dinner menus.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which had gone on sale in 1911 and is generally described as among the first widely marketed hydrogenated vegetable shortenings; the brand name appears throughout as both noun and verb, as it does here in "Criscoed pan." "Country club" is often said to have been a fashionable menu adjective in the 1910s, attached to sandwiches, salads and chicken dishes to suggest the food of golf-club dining rooms rather than any fixed formula, so the name may tell you more about the period's aspirations than about the dish's origin. The technique itself is older than the shortening: browning young chicken and then smothering it under a tight lid until tender is a standard American treatment, close kin to the smothered chicken of Southern kitchens, and the finishing splash of cream stirred into the pan is the same economy that produces cream gravy.