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Lamb Kidney en Brochette
Take four lambs' kidneys, cut nearly through, take out the white veins and trim off the fat. Wash well in cold water, put in a small saucepan and cover with boiling water, let stand near the fire for five minutes, take out and wipe dry.
Slice fat bacon very thin in pieces the size of the half of each kidney. Place a piece of kidney on a skewer, then a slice of bacon, then the kidney and bacon until the kidney is all used. Arrange on a broiler, baste with melted butter. Broil over a clear fire for six or eight minutes.
Dust with salt and pepper and serve very hot on the skewers.
Chicken, Baltimore Style Split a young chicken down the back as for broiling; take out the breastbone and cut off the tips of the wings. Cut into four pieces, dredge with salt and pepper, dip them in egg and crumbs and put in a pan with enough melted butter poured over each piece to moisten it.
Roast in a hot oven about twenty minutes. Make a rich cream sauce or Bechamel sauce, pour on a dish and place the chicken on it. Garnish with slices of fried bacon.-Anne Warner.
Two recipes have been run together in this page: skewered kidneys, and Anne Warner's Baltimore chicken. The notes below cover both.
- En brochette means on a skewerThe kidneys are meant to reach the table still threaded on the skewers. Metal skewers are best here; wooden ones scorch under direct heat unless soaked half an hour first.
- "Broil over a clear fire"This is a gridiron over coals that have burned down past the flame stage, not an overhead broiler. A charcoal grill or a ridged cast-iron pan gives the same result; an overhead broiler works but you will need to turn the skewers once.
- The blanching step"Let stand near the fire for five minutes" means off the heat, in hot water, on the cool edge of the range. It firms the kidneys and draws off some of the strong smell. Do not let the water return to a boil or the outside toughens before the skewering.
- Kidneys are quick meatSix to eight minutes total is right for lamb kidneys cut nearly through and opened out on the skewer. Past that they turn grainy. They are usually served faintly rosy at the centre.
- Fat bacon'Fat bacon' means bacon with a high proportion of fat, sliced very thin so it renders and bastes the kidney. The original does not specify smoked or unsmoked. Modern thick-cut bacon will not render in the time given.
- YieldFour kidneys serve two as a main course at breakfast or supper, four as a savoury course.
- "A hot oven" for the chickenRoughly 400-450F. Twenty minutes will cook a small crumbed bird cut in four, but a supermarket chicken today is considerably heavier than the "young chicken" meant here. Go by an instant-read thermometer at the thickest part of the thigh, 165F, rather than the clock.
- Getting the crumbs to stickDredging with salt and pepper alone gives egg very little to grip. A light dusting of flour before the egg and crumbs holds the coating on through the basting.
- BechamelThe "rich cream sauce" and Bechamel are treated as alternatives: a flour-and-butter roux loosened with cream, or with milk infused with onion and bay. Make it before the chicken goes in; it is poured onto the platter and the chicken set on top, so it should be thick enough not to run.
Kidneys on a skewer with a slip of bacon between each piece belong to the English breakfast and savoury tradition that American cookbooks of this period borrowed, and the French phrase en brochette was a fashionable way to label anything grilled on a skewer or pin. Offal was cheap and quick, and general cookbooks of the era carry pages of recipes for kidneys, liver, sweetbreads and tripe that have since drifted out of domestic cooking. The chicken recipe that follows carries a contributor's name, Anne Warner, which suggests it was submitted rather than written by the compiler. "Baltimore style" for fried or crumbed chicken with a cream sauce is generally traced to the Chesapeake habit of serving fried chicken with a milk gravy rather than the pan drippings alone.