Home › Poultry and Game › Blanquette of Chicken
Blanquette of Chicken
2 cups cold cooked chicken, cut in strips 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley 1 cup White Sauce II Yolks 2 eggs 2 tablespoons milk Add chicken to sauce; when well heated, add yolks of eggs slightly beaten, diluted with milk. Cook two minutes, then add parsley.
A quick way through leftover roast or poached chicken, thickened with egg yolks in the French manner. The whole dish takes about ten minutes once the sauce is made.
- Do not let it boilOnce the yolks go in, the sauce must stay below a simmer. Two minutes over low heat is enough to thicken it; a boil will scramble the yolks and the sauce will break into curds and thin liquid.
- White Sauce IIThe recipe cross-references a numbered white sauce given elsewhere in the book rather than spelling it out. In books of this kind the numbered sauces run from thin to thick by increasing the butter and flour against a cup of milk; check the book's own table for the exact proportions.
- Blanquette means whiteNothing should brown. Cook the roux only until it stops smelling of raw flour, and keep the heat gentle throughout so the finished dish stays pale ivory.
- Tempering the yolksThe 2 tablespoons milk is there to loosen the yolks so they disperse instead of setting in threads. Stirring a spoonful of the hot sauce into the yolk mixture first gives you more margin still.
- The chickenCold cooked chicken means poached or roasted meat cut in strips, roughly 10 oz of picked meat for the 2 cups called for. It only needs heating through; long cooking in the sauce makes it stringy.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; 2 cups of chicken in a cup of sauce would stretch to three or four small servings. Dishes of this type were commonly served over toast, rice, or in pastry shells. The original calls for no lemon.