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Chicken Patties
Pick the meat from a cold chicken, and mince it very finely. To every six ounces of chicken allow three ounces of lean ham, also minced, a piece of butter about the size of an egg, rolled in flour, a small tea-cupful of cream or new milk, and the same of white stock, two pinches of salt, one of pepper, a quarter of a small nutmeg grated, the thin rind of a quarter of a lemon finely grated, and a tea-spoonful of lemon-juice. A few minced mushrooms are a great improvement. Put these into a saucepan, and stir them gently for ten minutes, taking care that they do not burn. Line some patty-pans with good crust. Put a piece of paper crumpled up or a crust of bread into each to support the top while baking, and place a cover of crust over it. When sufficiently baked, take off the top crust, remove the bread or the paper, three-parts fill the patty with the mixture, replace the cover, being careful not to break it, and fasten it with white of egg. Time to bake, a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, 2d. each. Allow one for each person.
A Victorian way of using up a cold roast bird: a thick creamed hash of chicken and ham, baked separately from its pastry cases and spooned in at the last moment. The measurements are all household ones, so a few need translating.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz (55 g). It is rolled in flour so that the flour coats the butter, and that flour is what thickens the sauce as the butter melts; the recipe does not say how much flour to use.
- A small tea-cupfulRead as about 4 fl oz (120 ml) each of cream or milk and stock. Victorian teacups were smaller than modern mugs; if the filling looks thin after ten minutes it wants a little longer, as it should be thick enough to sit in pastry without soaking it.
- New milkSimply fresh whole milk, unskimmed and unsoured. Cream gives the better result here; a lighter cream is probably nearer what the book intended than modern double cream, though Victorian "cream" was not a standardised product.
- White stockA pale unroasted stock, veal or chicken, with no browned bones or dark vegetables. A light chicken stock is the practical substitute.
- Good crust and patty-pansPatty-pans are small tartlet or bun tins, about 2-3 in across; a shallow muffin tin works. The recipe does not define "good crust" or give an oven temperature; puff paste is the usual choice for covered patties and wants a hot oven for the quarter of an hour given.
- The crumpled paper and breadThe support keeps the lid from collapsing into the empty case while it bakes. Ceramic beans or dried pulses on parchment do the same job with less risk of the paper scorching.
- Ten minutes on the stoveStir gently over low heat and do not let it boil hard once the cream is in. The meat is already cooked, so this step is about thickening and marrying the flavours; longer only makes the chicken stringy.
- Reheated cooked poultryBring the mixture right up to steaming hot in the pan, and fill the cases while it is hot. Cold chicken held over from a previous meal should have been refrigerated, not left standing as a Victorian larder would have allowed.
- SeasoningA quarter of a small nutmeg grated is roughly 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon. The lemon rind should be zest only, no pith, or the filling turns bitter.
- YieldNine ounces of meat plus the sauce fills a modest number of small patties; the book counts one per person, which suits a light supper or a first course rather than a main dish.
Patties in this sense are not burgers but small covered pastry cases — the word comes from the French pâté, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery used \"patty\" for anything baked in a patty-pan. They belonged to the practical middle of the Victorian table: filling for a luncheon, a supper dish, part of a cold collation, and above all a way of turning the remains of a roast fowl into something that looked deliberate. Cassell's habit of quoting a \"probable cost\" — 2d. each here — marks the book as one written for households keeping accounts, where a cook was expected to justify the second day's use of a bird. The chicken-and-ham combination, bound with cream and lifted with nutmeg and lemon, is the same flavouring logic that runs through veal forcemeats and potted meats of the period, when mace, nutmeg and lemon rind did the work now given to herbs.