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When the Gringo Came
To its pioneer days much of San Francisco's Bohemian spirit is due. When the cry of "Gold" rang around the world adventurous wanderers of all lands answered the call, and during the year following Marshall's discovery two thousand ships sailed into San Francisco Bay, many to be abandoned on the beach by the gold-mad throng, and it was in some of these deserted sailing vessels that San Francisco's restaurant life had its inception. With the immediately succeeding years the horde of gold hunters was augmented by those who brought necessities and luxuries to exchange for the yellow metal given up by the streams flowing from the Mother Lode. With them also came cooks to prepare delectable dishes for those who had passed the flap-jack stage, and desired the good things of life to repay them for the hardships, privations and dearth of woman's companionship. As the male human was largely dominant in numbers it was but natural that they should gather together for companionship, and here began the Bohemian spirit that has marked the city for its own to the present day. These men were all individualists, and their individualism has been transmitted to their offspring together with independence of action. Hence comes the Bohemianism born of individuality and independence.
It was only natural that the early San Franciscans should foregather where good cheer was to be found, and the old El Dorado House, at Portsmouth Square, was really what may be called the first Bohemian restaurant of the city. So well was this place patronized and so exorbitant the prices charged that twenty-five thousand dollars a month was not considered an impossible rental. Next in importance was the most fashionable restaurant of early days, the Iron House. It was built of heavy sheet iron that had been brought around the Horn in a sailing vessel, and catered well, becoming for several years the most famed restaurant of the city. Here, in Montgomery street, between Jackson and Pacific, was the rendezvous of pioneers, and here the Society of California Pioneers had its inception, receiving impressions felt to the present day in San Francisco and California history. Here, also, was first served Chicken in the Shell, the dish from which so many later restaurants gained fame. The recipe for this as prepared by the Iron House is still extant, and we are indebted to a lady, who was a little girl when that restaurant was waning, whose mother secured the recipe. It was prepared as follows:
CHICKEN IN THE SHELL Into a kettle containing a quart of water put a young chicken, one sliced onion, a bay leaf, two cloves, a blade of mace and six pepper-corns. Simmer in the covered kettle for one hour and set aside to cool. When cool remove the meat from the bones, rejecting the skin. Cut the meat into small dice. Mix in a saucepan, over a fire without browning, a tablespoonful of butter, a tablespoonful of flour, then add half a pint of cream. Stir this constantly until it boils, then add a truffle, two dozen mushrooms chopped fine, a dash of white pepper and then the dice of chicken. Let the whole stand in a bain marie, or chafing dish, until quite hot. Add the yolks of two eggs and let cook two minutes. Stir in half a glass of sherry and serve in cockle shells.
The narrative is history, but the Iron House recipe embedded in it is a complete working formula for a creamed chicken served in shells. A few of its measures and its egg-yolk finish need attention.
- The hinge: the yolksOnce the two yolks go in, the sauce must not reach a simmer or it will curdle into grains. Off the heat, or in the bain marie as written, two minutes of steady stirring is enough to thicken it; the sherry then goes in last and cold, which helps arrest the cooking.
- "A young chicken"A broiler-fryer of about 3 lb. A quart of water will not cover it, so turn it once during the hour or use a narrow pot. Let it cool in its own broth rather than lifting it out hot, or the breast dries.
- Save the brothThe recipe makes no further use of it, which is waste. Strain the aromatics out and reduce the liquid hard; a few spoonfuls stirred into the cream sauce give it far more body than cream alone.
- Two dozen mushroomsThe count probably assumes smaller mushrooms than a modern large cap; somewhere around 8-10 oz. Chop and cook off their water in butter before they meet the sauce, otherwise the finished mixture goes thin.
- A truffleGenuinely ambiguous: most likely a single preserved truffle, perhaps an ounce, sliced or minced with a little of its liquor. A teaspoon of good truffle paste, or simply a few drops of truffle oil at the end, stands in; the dish is respectable without it.
- Half a pint, half a glassHalf a pint of cream is one cup. "Half a glass" of sherry is imprecise; reckoned against the usual period wineglass it is nearer 1 fl oz, though up to 2 is defensible -- use a dry amontillado or fino rather than anything labelled cream sherry.
- SeasoningNo salt is called for anywhere. Salt the poaching water lightly and correct the sauce before the yolks go in.
- Shells and yieldCockle shells were small; scallop shells, coquille dishes or 6 oz ramekins serve the same purpose. The quantity fills four to six of them as a first course, or three as a light supper. A brief pass under the broiler with buttered crumbs is no part of this version.
This passage comes from Clarence E. Edwords's Bohemian San Francisco (1914), a book written partly as a memorial: much of the restaurant world it describes had been destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, and Edwords set out to record the dishes before the cooks who made them were gone. The Iron House, as the passage says, was built of heavy sheet iron brought around Cape Horn in a sailing vessel; iron buildings of this kind were shipped to Gold Rush San Francisco in the early 1850s. Chicken in the shell belongs to a broad nineteenth-century family of creamed meats and shellfish served in scallop shells — the French coquille — a format that let a restaurant present something rich and finished in individual portions without carving at the table. The yolk-and-sherry enrichment and the truffle mark it as ambitious cooking for a mining town, which is precisely Edwords's point: men who had been eating flapjacks in the diggings would pay extravagantly for cream sauce. His provenance for the recipe, a lady whose mother obtained it while the restaurant was waning, is the kind of secondhand chain that should be treated as tradition rather than documentation.