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Stewed Chicken
Cut up the chicken as if to fry, adding the prepared head and feet. Soak in weak salt and water. If for dinner, do this immediately after breakfast. An hour and a half before dinner, put in a saucepan, covering well with water. Let it simmer slowly for one hour. Take it out with a fork and lay in a bowl. Add a teacup milk and half a teaspoonful black pepper to the liquor. Let it boil up and strain on the chicken. Rinse the saucepan and return all to the fire. Beat one egg with a tablespoonful of flour and one of milk until quite smooth. Mince some parsley, thyme, and a very little onion, and stir all into the saucepan. Then put in a tablespoonful of butter. Stir around and pour into a dish in which small pieces of toast have been neatly arranged. Garnish with curled parsley.--Mrs. S. T.
Stewed Chicken.
Cut up and lay in salt and water. Put them in water enough to cover them, with some slices of middling. Let them boil till nearly done. Then put in the dumplings, made like biscuit but rolled thin, and let them boil till done. Roll a piece of butter in flour, with pepper, salt, chopped parsley and celery, or a little celery-seed. When the gravy is thick enough, pour in a teacup of cream or milk, and let it boil up once. Take off the fire and serve hot.--Mrs. Col. W.
Two versions from different contributors: the first a fricassee thickened with egg and served on toast, the second a chicken-and-dumpling stew. Both assume a bird considerably older and tougher than anything sold today.
- The birdA late-19th-century "chicken" for stewing was often an older, spent hen, which is why the second recipe boils it until "nearly done" before the dumplings go in and the first allows a full hour of simmering. A modern 3-4 lb chicken cut into eight pieces is tender in 35-45 minutes; check that the thigh joint reaches 165F and stop there, or the breast will shred.
- Head and feetThe feet are pure collagen and give the broth real body — worth seeking at an Asian or halal butcher if you want the original texture. Blanch and peel the yellow outer skin before use. The head adds little and can be skipped without loss.
- MiddlingIn the second recipe this is middling meat, the salt-cured side pork between shoulder and ham — closest modern substitute is thick-cut salt pork or unsmoked streaky bacon. Because it is salty, hold back on added salt until the gravy is finished.
- TeacupThe book does not define its teacup; in cookery of this period it is usually reckoned at somewhere between half and three-quarters of a cup rather than a full measuring cup. A tablespoonful of butter is roughly half an ounce.
- The hinge: the egg liaisonIn the first recipe, the beaten egg with flour and milk goes in over heat but the pan must not return to a boil, or the egg curdles into threads and the sauce breaks. Temper it first with a ladle of the hot liquor, stir it back in, and hold the pan just below a simmer until it thickens.
- Soaking in salt and waterThe morning-long soak in "weak salt and water" was most likely intended to draw blood from a freshly killed bird; in effect it is a light brine. 30 minutes to an hour in a tablespoon of salt per quart of water gives the seasoning benefit. Do not leave poultry in water at room temperature for hours — refrigerate it.
- Dumplings"Made like biscuit but rolled thin" means a rolled, noodle-like dumpling cut into strips or squares, not dropped spoonfuls — the Virginia and Pennsylvania slippery-dumpling tradition. Roll to about an eighth of an inch, drop into simmering (not rolling) liquid, and give them 12-15 minutes covered.
- Thickening"Roll a piece of butter in flour" is a beurre manié: work about a tablespoon of soft butter into an equal amount of flour and whisk it in in pieces. Add the cream at the end and bring it up once only.
- YieldEither version serves four to six. For the first, allow two slices of toast per person and arrange them in the dish just before the sauce goes over, so they absorb without collapsing.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia was compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathering contributions from about two hundred and fifty ladies in Virginia and her sister states — hence the initials, "Mrs. S. T." and "Mrs. Col. W.," standing in for named women. Printing two competing versions of stewed chicken side by side was ordinary practice in such books: the point was not one authoritative method but a record of how several households actually did it. The two here mark a real divide in American chicken cookery — the genteel fricassee finished with egg and served on toast, closer to English and French practice, against the plainer stew stretched with salt pork and rolled dumplings, which is the ancestor of Southern chicken and dumplings. Both descend from the same practical fact: a hen past laying was too tough to roast, and long moist heat was the only way to make her good eating.