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Chicken, Scalloped
Take the remains of a cold chicken, free it from skin and gristle, and mince it finely. Place the mince in a saucepan, and moisten it with some white sauce, or, failing that, some white stock mixed with a little cream, and thickened with flour. Season with salt, cayenne, and pounded mace. Let the mixture boil, stirring it all the time. Butter the scallop shells, strew some bread-crumbs over them, fill them with the mixture, and strew more bread-crumbs over the top. Sprinkle some clarified butter over them, bake in a hot oven, and serve with pickles or cucumber. Time, half an hour. Probable cost, 4d., exclusive of the cold chicken. Allow two for each person.
A Victorian way of using up the last of a roast bird, built around real scallop shells as individual baking dishes. Two notes matter most: the mince must be bound thickly enough to hold its shape, and the half-hour in the oven is for browning, not cooking.
- Oven temperatureCassell's gives no figures; "hot oven" is usually taken today to mean somewhere around 425-450F. The filling is already cooked and hot when it goes in, so the shells need only long enough to set the crumbs and brown the top; at that heat 12 to 15 minutes may be enough, and the half-hour given risks drying the mince.
- Scallop shellsDeep scallop shells were sold as kitchenware and were washed and reused; you can buy them still, or use ramekins, gratin dishes or small ovenproof saucers of roughly 1/3 cup capacity. Butter and crumb them as written.
- YieldTwo shells per person means the recipe assumes roughly a cup and a half of mince for two to three people. The remains of a 4 lb roast chicken, picked clean of skin and gristle, will give perhaps 2 to 2 1/2 cups of meat - enough for three, or four at a stretch.
- Consistency of the mixtureMoisten, do not slacken. The mince should be thick enough to mound on a spoon; if it pours, it will soak the crumbs and the top will not brown. About 3/4 cup of white sauce to 2 cups of mince is the right proportion.
- Pounded maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, sold ground or as blades. Ground mace is the direct substitute; a scant 1/4 teaspoon for this quantity. Nutmeg is close but sweeter and coarser.
- Clarified butterButter with the milk solids removed, so it browns without scorching or speckling. Melt butter gently, let it settle, and pour off the clear fat. Two tablespoons drizzled over the crumbs is plenty; ordinary melted butter works but darkens faster.
- White stockStock made from veal or poultry bones without prior browning, so it stays pale. Any unsalted chicken stock does the job here; the point was colour rather than flavour, since a brown stock would muddy the dish.
- Probable cost4d. is fourpence in pre-decimal currency - the cost of the sauce, crumbs and butter only, the chicken being already paid for. Cassell's gives a probable cost for most of its recipes.
Scalloped dishes take their name from the shell they were baked and served in, and the word long ago drifted from the container to the method: anything minced, sauced, crumbed and browned. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery is thick with recipes of this kind because a middle-class household of the period bought whole birds and joints, and the second and third appearances of a roast chicken at table were a matter of routine domestic economy rather than thrift born of hardship. The pickles or cucumber served alongside are doing real work - a sharp, cold, acid note against a rich white sauce, the same logic that put a pickle beside potted meats and rissoles. The recipe assumes you already have the shells to hand.