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Chicken and Oysters a la Metropole
1/4 cup butter 1/4 cup flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 2 cups cream 2 cups cold cooked chicken, cut in dice 1 pint oysters, cleaned and drained 1/3 cup finely chopped celery Make a sauce of first five ingredients, add chicken dice and oysters; cook until oysters are plump. Serve sprinkled with celery.
A creamed chicken supper dish built on a plain white sauce, with oysters poached in it at the last moment. The whole success rests on how briefly the oysters are in the pan.
- The hinge: oyster timing"Cook until oysters are plump" means two to three minutes at a bare simmer, until the edges ruffle and the flesh firms. Past that they tighten and turn rubbery, and they leak liquor that thins the sauce.
- A pint of oystersSold by liquid measure, not weight: depending on size, a pint holds somewhere between about 20 and 35 shucked oysters, and drains to roughly 10 to 12 oz of meat. Shucked oysters in a tub from the fish counter are the direct equivalent.
- CreamPeriod "cream" here was probably nearer modern half-and-half or light cream than heavy cream. Heavy cream will work but gives a much richer, thicker result; loosen it with a little chicken stock or milk.
- Building the sauceMelt the butter, cook the flour in it a minute or two without colouring, then add the cream gradually off the heat and return it to a gentle simmer until it coats a spoon. Keep the heat low once the dairy is in.
- Reserve the oyster liquorThe recipe drains the oysters and discards the liquor. Strain a few tablespoons of it into the sauce instead for depth, and salt at the end, since the liquor is already salty.
- The chickenCold cooked chicken means leftover roast or poached bird, about 10 oz diced. Add it only long enough to heat through; it is already cooked.
- The celery garnishThe raw chopped celery goes on at the table for crunch and does not cook. Cut it fine and add it at the last second or it goes limp in the heat.
- Serving and yieldServes four generously. The recipe gives no serving vehicle, but the sauce is thick enough to hold on toast points, a patty shell, or boiled rice.
Dishes labelled a la Metropole in American cookbooks of the 1900s and 1910s appear to have borrowed the name of a fashionable hotel or restaurant; like a la Newburg or a la King, whose own origins are disputed, the label promised a rich cream sauce and a luxury ingredient rather than any fixed formula. Chicken and oysters together were a standard pairing in that period, when shucked oysters were sold by the pint in city markets and were far more of an everyday ingredient than they are now. The combination also answered a familiar domestic problem: what to do with cold cooked poultry, which a white sauce, a garnish, and a French-sounding name could restore to the level of company food.