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Chicken Hollandaise
1 1/2 tablespoons butter 1/3 cup finely chopped celery 1 teaspoon finely chopped onion 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons corn-starch Few grains paprika 1 cup chicken stock 1 cup cold cooked chicken, cut in small cubes 1 teaspoon lemon juice Yolk 1 egg Cook butter and onion five minutes, add corn-starch and stock gradually. Add lemon juice, celery, salt, paprika, and chicken; when well heated, add yolk of egg slightly beaten, and cook one minute. Serve with buttered Graham toast.
A creamed chicken on toast, thickened with cornstarch and finished with an egg yolk rather than a true butter emulsion. It comes together in about fifteen minutes and depends entirely on how you handle the yolk.
- The yolk is the hingeOnce the yolk goes in, keep the pan below a simmer and stir constantly for that one minute. If the sauce boils the yolk curdles into threads and the smooth finish is gone. Pulling the pan off the heat, stirring in a spoonful of the hot sauce to loosen the yolk, then returning it is the safest route.
- Cornstarch needs a boil firstAdd the stock gradually to the butter and cornstarch and bring it to a full boil for a minute before the yolk goes in, or the starch will not thicken fully and the sauce tastes chalky. Only then drop the heat for the yolk.
- The celery stays rawThe celery stays nearly raw -- as written the celery is added near the end and only heated through, so it should stay fairly crisp. If you want it soft, cook it with the onion at the start.
- Graham toastGraham bread is whole-wheat bread, coarser than modern sandwich wheat. Any dense whole-grain bread, toasted and buttered, does the job.
- Chicken stockThe recipe simply calls for chicken stock, and a good homemade one will carry much of the flavour. Canned broth is thinner and saltier, so hold back some of the quarter-teaspoon of salt until you taste at the end.
- Not a hollandaiseThere is no butter emulsion here; the name may refer only to the lemon-and-yolk finish. The sauce behaves more like a veloute, so do not expect hollandaise texture or try to whisk in extra butter.
- YieldAbout two cups of creamed chicken, enough for two generous or three modest servings over toast.
By 1900 "Hollandaise" was sometimes used loosely in American cookbooks for sauces finished with egg yolk and lemon rather than emulsified butter. Dishes of this shape - a cup of cold cooked chicken, a cup of stock, a starch-bound sauce, toast underneath - were a common answer to the remains of a roast fowl, and they appear in the luncheon and chafing-dish chapters of household manuals. Cornstarch was cheap and widely available by this date, and a single yolk stirred in at the end is one period way of adding richness without cream.