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Chicken En Casserole
Put into the casserole three tablespoons of butter, a small onion and half a carrot cut into thin slices. Cook ten minutes and add the chicken, disjointed as for a fricassee. Brown, and cook for half an hour. Pour over the chicken one and one-half cups of stock or bo. ing water, add the juice of half a lemon, and two bay-leaves. Bake i a moderate oven an hour and a half. Season with salt and peppe and add a can of mushrooms. Cook fifteen minutes longer, and serve en casserole.
A straightforward braise: brown the bird in aromatics, moisten lightly, and let a slow oven do the rest. A few of the instructions need translating before you start.
- What "casserole" means hereIn 1911 a casserole was the vessel itself — a lidded earthenware or enameled pot that went from stovetop to oven to table. A Dutch oven or any heavy lidded braiser is the direct equivalent, and the dish is meant to be served in it.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven was generally reckoned at roughly 350F, though period sources range up to about 375F. With the lid on and only a cup and a half of liquid, 325F is safer for the full hour and a half; check that the liquid has not cooked away at the halfway mark.
- Total cooking timeTen minutes for the vegetables, half an hour browning, then ninety minutes covered, plus fifteen with the mushrooms — close to two and a half hours in all. A modern 3½–4 lb chicken cut into eight pieces will be fully tender well before that; an hour in the oven is usually enough, and breast pieces can be lifted out earlier.
- BrowningThe original reads 'Brown, and cook for half an hour', which may mean brown the pieces and then cook them a further half hour rather than half an hour of browning as such. Either way, turn the pieces in the butter over moderate heat until they are deeply colored on all sides, not searing them hard. Butter alone will darken; add a spoonful of neutral oil if it starts to smoke.
- Canned mushroomsTin sizes of the period varied and were often small; an 8 oz can is a reasonable modern stand-in. Drain and rinse them, or substitute 8 oz of fresh mushrooms sauteed separately -- the fifteen minutes at the end is enough to warm canned mushrooms but not to cook raw ones down.
- Liquid levelOne and a half cups will not cover the chicken, and it is not meant to. This is a braise; the lid keeps the top of the bird moist. Keep the pot covered for the oven stage.
- Seasoning pointSalt goes in only at the end in the original. Season the chicken lightly before browning as well, or the meat itself will taste flat no matter how good the sauce is.
- YieldServes four generously. Two bay leaves in this quantity of liquid is assertive over ninety minutes — one is plenty if your bay is fresh.
Good Things to Eat (1911) was written by Rufus Estes, born enslaved in Tennessee in 1857, who cooked in Chicago restaurants and then for the Pullman Company's private railcars before taking charge of the subsidiary kitchens of a steel company. His book is one of the earliest cookbooks published by an African American author, and its contents reflect a professional's repertoire rather than a regional one: French service terms, hotel-style sauces, and dishes like this one that could be finished in a single vessel and carried to the table. "En casserole" was fashionable restaurant French of the period, signaling that the food arrived in the pot it was cooked in — a presentation well suited to a dining car, where crockery that could hold heat mattered as much as flavor. Canned mushrooms, which appear here without comment, were called for routinely in cookbooks of the period.