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Baked Fried Chicken
Clean and wash young chickens, cut at every joint, and divide the breast into 2 pieces. Lay in salad-oil and lemon juice for half an hour; drain, roll in beaten egg, then in cracker crumbs. Lay upon the grating of your covered roaster, pour a little gravy in the underneath part, and cover closely. Cook for three-quarters of an hour, basting frequently with butter and gravy. Uncover, and brown. Garnish with parsley.
An oven-baked answer to skillet frying, written for the covered tin roaster that stood in most kitchens around 1900. The method translates directly to a roasting pan with a rack and a tight lid or foil.
- The hinge: cover first, uncover lastThe closed lid steams the chicken through gently, and only the final uncovered stretch sets the crust. If you brown it early the crumbs darken long before the thighs are done.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. Bake covered at 350F, then uncover and raise to 425F for the last 10 to 15 minutes to colour the crumbs.
- Salad-oilPlain neutral oil; in this period often olive oil or cottonseed. Any mild vegetable oil works for the lemon marinade.
- "A little gravy"This means a shallow pour of chicken stock or pan juices in the bottom of the roaster, below the rack, to keep the enclosed air moist. About half a cup is enough; it should not touch the chicken.
- Cracker crumbsCrushed soda crackers or plain water biscuits, not seasoned breadcrumbs. They brown faster and taste saltier than panko, so season the egg lightly rather than the crumbs.
- Basting versus crustFrequent basting with butter and gravy, as directed, softens the coating. Butter alone brushed on two or three times gives colour without soaking the crumbs to paste.
- Timing and donenessForty-five minutes covered suits a genuinely young bird cut small. Modern supermarket chicken parts are heavier; go by an internal reading of 165F at the thigh joint rather than the clock.
- YieldThe recipe calls for young chickens, plural, and the spring birds meant here were small. One modern 3 to 4 lb chicken jointed this way — two breast halves, two thighs, two drumsticks, two wings — will serve four.
"Baked fried chicken" belongs to the era of the covered roaster, a deep tin box with a lid and an inner rack used on coal and early gas ranges. It let a cook get the crumb crust and something of the look of fried chicken without standing over a spider of hot fat, and it used less fat at a time when frying grease was a household expense. Recipes of this kind appear in American compilations through the later nineteenth century. The lemon-and-oil soak before crumbing recalls the older French practice of marinating poultry and veal before egging and breading them. The instruction to divide the breast into two pieces reflects the small spring chickens then sold for such dishes, birds lighter than most sold whole today.