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Chicken Patties
Pick the meat from a cold chicken, and mince it very finely. To every 6 ounces of chicken allow 3 ounces of lean ham also minced, a piece of butter about the size of an egg rolled in flour, a small teacupful of cream or new milk and the same of white stock, 2 pinches of salt, 1 of pepper, 1/4 of a small nutmeg grated, the thin rind of 1/4 of a lemon finely grated, and a teaspoonful 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, 3 parts fill the patty with the mixture, replace the cover, being careful not to break it, and fasten it with white of egg.
A Victorian use for leftover roast chicken: a thickened mince of chicken and ham baked into small covered pastry cases. The filling is cooked separately and the cases are blind-baked empty, then married at the last moment.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz (4 tablespoons). Rolled in flour means the lump is dredged or coated in flour, which thickens the filling as the butter melts.
- A small teacupfulRead as about 1/2 cup. You want equal parts cream and white stock, roughly 1/2 cup each to 6 oz chicken and 3 oz ham; add the liquid gradually and stop when the mixture is thick enough to sit in a pastry case without running.
- White stockA pale, unroasted stock of chicken or veal, not a browned brown stock. Unsalted commercial chicken stock is the nearest thing; if it is salted, hold back the two pinches until the end. New milk is simply fresh whole milk.
- Keep it below a simmerTen minutes of gentle stirring is to cook the flour and reduce the sauce, not to cook the meat, which is already cooked. Hard boiling will curdle the cream and toughen the chicken shreds.
- Lemon rindThe thin rind means the coloured zest only, taken with a fine grater or a peeler; any white pith turns the filling bitter. A quarter of a lemon is roughly half to three-quarters of a teaspoon of zest.
- Patty-pans and the paperSmall tartlet or muffin tins. The crumpled paper or crust of bread is doing the job of modern baking beans, holding the base down and propping the lid; line the case with parchment and dried beans instead, and bake the lids separately on a flat tray so they keep their shape.
- OvenNo temperature is given, and the recipe says only "good crust." For cases this size, 425F for 15-20 minutes will dry and colour the pastry through rather than merely set it.
- Sealing with egg whiteA brush of raw egg white glues the lid back on and sets in the residual heat. If the patties are to be served hot, return them to the oven for two or three minutes after filling; that also cooks the egg white.
- YieldThe quantities given will fill roughly half a dozen patties of muffin-tin size, three parts full as directed, though this depends on the size of the pans. Scale the chicken and ham in the same 2:1 ratio for more.
Patties in nineteenth-century English cookery are small covered pastry cases with a savoury minced filling, and they were one way of using up the remains of a roast fowl. The filling here is a stock-and-cream sauce thickened with the floured butter and lifted with nutmeg, lemon zest and juice, seasonings long paired with poultry forcemeats; mushrooms and ham supply the savour that cold cooked chicken lacks. The technique of blind-baking a case with a crust of bread or crumpled paper inside predates cheap ceramic baking beans.