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Chicken Pot-Pie
Cut up a chicken and put on in hot water enough to cover, and take care that it does not cook dry; while boiling cut off a slice from bread dough, add a small lump of lard, and mix up like light biscuit, roll, cut out with cake-cutter and set by stove to rise; wash and pare potatoes of moderate size, and add them when chicken is almost done; when potatoes begin to boil, season with salt and pepper, add dumplings and season again. See that there is water enough to keep from burning, cover very tightly, and do not take cover off until dumplings are done. They will cook in half an hour, and may be tested by lifting one edge of the lid, taking out a dumpling and breaking it open. Or, the dumplings may be placed in steamer over cold water, taking care to leave some of the holes in steamer open, as if all are covered by the dumplings, the steam will not be admitted, and they will not cook well. If there are too many dumplings to lie on bottom without covering all holes, attach them to the side and upper edge of steamer by wetting dough and pressing it to the edge. When done remove to vegetable dish and pour hot gravy over them. Dish potatoes by themselves, and chickens and dumplings together. Make gravy by mixing two level table-spoons flour and a little butter together, and stir into the broth remaining in pot slowly, add more boiling water if needed and season with salt and pepper. Or, make dumplings with one pint sour milk, two well-beaten eggs, half tea-spoon soda (mixed in part of the flour), and flour enough to make as stiff as can be stirred with a spoon; or baking powder and sweet milk may be used. Drop in by spoonfuls, cover tightly, and boil as above. A pot-pie may be made from a good boiling piece of beef; if too much grease arises skim off.
A stovetop pot-pie in the older sense: chicken stewed with raised dough dumplings, no pastry crust and no oven. The instructions assume a cook with bread dough already rising on the counter.
- The hinge: keep the lid onRaised or drop dumplings cook by trapped steam, and lifting the cover drops the temperature enough to leave them dense and gummy in the middle. Give them the full half hour undisturbed, then test one at the very end by lifting only an edge of the lid.
- "A slice from bread dough"The first dumpling relies on having yeasted bread dough at hand; the book gives no quantity, only "a slice" of dough worked with "a small lump of lard" until it resembles biscuit dough. The sour-milk version at the end is the practical one for most kitchens today.
- Saleratus and sour milkThe "soda" in the alternate dumpling is baking soda, and "sour milk" means naturally soured raw milk. Cultured buttermilk is the direct substitute; the note that baking powder and sweet (fresh) milk may be used instead is the version most cooks will reach for.
- A pint is two cupsThe sour-milk dumplings take 2 cups buttermilk, 2 eggs, 1/2 teaspoon soda and flour enough to make a very stiff batter. The book gives no flour figure; add it until the mixture is as stiff as can be stirred with a spoon.
- Chicken and cooking timeA stewing hen would have taken well over an hour to soften. A modern 4 to 5 lb chicken, cut up, is tender in about 45 minutes at a bare simmer; the book adds the potatoes when the chicken is almost done and the dumplings as soon as the potatoes come to a boil, after which the dumplings need their half hour.
- Water levelStart with water enough to cover and keep the chicken barely covered throughout; the recipe warns both against cooking dry and to see that there is water enough, and any topping up should be with boiling, never cold, water.
- The steamer optionThe advice about leaving vent holes clear applies to any perforated steamer insert set over the pot. Dumplings should sit in a single layer with gaps between them, or the steam never reaches the upper ones.
- YieldThe book gives no yield. Serve it as the book directs: potatoes in one dish, chicken and dumplings in another, gravy poured over.
"Pot-pie" in nineteenth-century American usage often meant exactly this, a meat stew finished with dough cooked in the closed pot rather than a pastry-topped dish from the oven, and the Pennsylvania Dutch bot boi survives as a close relative. Buckeye Cookery, compiled in Ohio in 1877 by Estelle Woods Wilcox from contributed recipes, is full of recipes that borrow from work already in progress in the kitchen: here the dumpling starts as a slice cut from the day's bread dough, which costs the cook nothing extra and needs no leavening of its own. The three dumpling options given in one paragraph, yeasted dough, soda and sour milk, or baking powder and sweet milk, track the transition of the period, as commercial baking powder became reliable and cheap enough that a household no longer had to depend on a bread sponge or on soured milk for lift.