Home › Favorite Dishes in Famous Homes › Favorite Dishes in Famous Homes: Thomas
Favorite Dishes in Famous Homes: Thomas
From Mrs. Thomas P. Gore, wife of Senator from Oklahoma Braised Veal Slice veal steak into strips from one to one and one half inches thick.
Season well to taste, and roll up and skewer with toothpicks. Fry them in hot butter till browned on both sides -be sure not to scratch. Place them in a roaster and sprinkle with butter, add enough water-cream and water is better, but in that case do not use butter. Bake from two to four hours in a moderate oven. Be careful not to burn.
This recipe was originated by a friend of mine, Mrs. Thomas H.
Dunn of Oklahoma, and from experience I know just how delicious it is. The following recipe was given by one of the best cooks in America.
Chicken Fricassee.
Cut a fowl up into pieces, put it in a saucepan covered with boiling water and cook very slowly till tender. When half done, season with salt and pepper. Lift out the pieces, allow them to drain, sift with flour to which a little salt and pepper has been added, then sauté slowly in pork fat. Arrange the chicken in pieces upon toast, or if liked better, fix New England style, with a circle of baking powder biscuits about them heaped on a platter. In arranging the chicken, lay it on the platter as much as possible in the shape of a whole bird, having the breast in the centre, legs and wings in the natural position and back underneath; this makes it easy to serve. To the liquor from the chicken add cup of cream or three tablespoonfuls of butter and thicken with a quarter of a cup of flour dissolved in cold water. Strain over the chicken and biscuits. If there is more gravy than the platter will hold serve it in a gravy boat. a
Two recipes from the same page: rolled veal braised long and slow, and a fricassee that browns the bird after poaching rather than before. Both assume a coal range and a cook standing nearby.
- Moderate ovenRead it as 350F. For veal rolls only an inch or so thick, the low end of the stated range is right — closer to two hours than four, covered, or the meat will dry out no matter how much liquid is in the pan.
- "Be sure not to scratch"Most likely a warning not to pierce or tear the rolls while browning, though the phrase is obscure. Turn them with tongs or a spatula rather than a fork, so the seasoned interior does not leak into the butter.
- Butter or cream, not bothThe instruction is deliberate. If you braise in cream and water, skip the butter sprinkling; the cream carries enough fat and the doubled richness will break into a greasy pan sauce.
- Veal steak into stripsCutlets pounded thin roll far better than a thick steak cut into fingers. Ask for veal scaloppine or shoulder steak sliced thin, then roll and pin with toothpicks as written.
- A fowl is not a broilerIn this period a "fowl" meant a mature laying hen — tough, fat, deeply flavored, and needing two hours or more of slow simmering. A supermarket chicken of 4-5 lb will be tender in 60-75 minutes; check the thigh rather than the clock.
- Pork fatLard, or fat rendered from a few pieces of salt pork or bacon. Neutral oil works but loses the point of the dish, which is the pork flavor on the flour crust.
- "Sift with flour"Dredge the drained pieces in seasoned flour, patting off the excess. Wet skin will steam instead of browning, so let the chicken sit until the surface looks matte before flouring.
- The gravy proportions"Cup of cream" is almost certainly one cup. A quarter cup of flour slaked in cold water will thicken roughly two to three cups of cooking liquor; add it gradually and stop when the sauce coats a spoon.
- YieldThe fricassee will serve four to six. The recipe gives no weight for the veal; about 1 1/2 lb, cut into eight to twelve rolls, will serve four.
Favorite Dishes in Famous Homes belongs to a genre that flourished around the turn of the twentieth century: the celebrity-contributed cookbook, in which the wives of senators, governors and generals were solicited for a dish and a signature. Such compilations could be charitable, commercial or promotional in purpose. The value was social as much as culinary, which is why Mrs. Gore's note carefully credits her friend Mrs. Dunn and why the fricassee arrives anonymously from "one of the best cooks in America" ricassee itself is the older and more revealing of the two. Poaching a tough hen first and browning it afterward is the reverse of French practice, and dressing the pieces back into the shape of the bird is said to have been a familiar instruction in nineteenth-century American cookery, when a platter was served from the table rather than plated in the kitchen. The ring of baking powder biscuits marked "New England style" points to chemical leavening, which had spread through home baking after the mid-1800s and made a hot bread possible in the time it took to finish a gravy.