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Egg-Plant Farcied
Take two small egg-plants, cut into halves, scrape out the centre, leaving a wall about one inch thick. Chop the white meat of one cooked chicken, add to it half a cup of bread crumbs, one teaspoonful of onion juice, a half teaspoonful of salt, a tablespoonful of melted butter and a palatable seasoning of pepper. Put this in the centre of the egg-plant, sprinkling a few crumbs over the top. Cut one onion and one carrot into slices; put them in the bottom of a baking pan with a bay leaf, four cloves and a blade of mace. Stand the egg-plant on top, add a quart of stock and bake in a moderate oven one hour, basting from time to time with the stock in the pan. When done serve with Spanish sauce poured over it.
A braised stuffed eggplant from the era when "farci" was fashionable enough to be half-anglicized. The method is sound, but a few of the quantities and terms need translating.
- FarciedAn anglicization of the French farci, stuffed. Nothing more exotic than that.
- Moderate oven350F. The dish is effectively a braise, so the temperature matters less than keeping liquid in the pan.
- The scooped-out fleshThe recipe tells you to scrape out the centre and then never mentions it again. It can be chopped, sautéed and folded into the chicken filling.
- Salting the shellsEggplant of the period had a reputation for bitterness, and salting and draining was a common remedy; this recipe does not call for it. Modern cultivars rarely need it, though 20 minutes under salt still firms the flesh.
- Onion juiceGrate an onion on the fine side of a box grater and use the liquid that collects. A teaspoon takes only a small piece of onion.
- Blade of maceA single piece of the lacy aril around a nutmeg. Substitute a scant pinch of ground mace, or a smaller pinch of grated nutmeg.
- A quart of stockThat is four cups, and it is a lot for one pan. Enough to come an inch up the sides is the point; the rest is basting liquid and will reduce into the sauce base.
- An hour is a maximumSmall eggplants basted at 350F are usually tender at 40 to 50 minutes. The chicken is already cooked, so you are only cooking the shell — test with a knife tip rather than trusting the clock.
- Spanish saucePeriod books mean sauce espagnole: a brown roux-based sauce with stock and mirepoix, often with tomato. The strained pan liquid, reduced and thickened, makes a reasonable stand-in.
- YieldFour halves. A main course for two, a first course or side for four.
Stuffed vegetables in the French manner were one way for late nineteenth-century American cookbooks to make a vegetable course substantial without calling it a meat dish, and a recipe calling for the white meat of an already-cooked chicken lends itself to using up leftovers. Eggplant had a slower start in Anglo-American kitchens than in the South or in immigrant households, having been grown ornamentally before it was widely eaten, and period cookery writers commonly introduced it fried in slices or, as here, dressed up with French technique and a French name. The bed of sliced onion and carrot with bay, cloves and mace is a mirepoix in all but name, and the finishing espagnole reflects the classical repertoire that American cooking schools of the period were teaching to middle-class housekeepers.