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Chicken à la Burgen
Cut the remains of a cold chicken into neat pieces. Make a marinade in a pudding dish with salad oil, lemon juice, a little finely chopped onion and parsley, and a good seasoning of salt and pepper. Lay the pieces of chicken in this mixture and turn them occasionally. Make a batter with 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, 1 tablespoonful of water, yolk of 1 egg, and ½ a wineglassful of brandy. Let this batter rest in a warm place for one hour, then stir in quickly the stiffly beaten white of egg, dip the pieces of chicken in the batter, fry at once in smoking hot fat till a golden color, drain, pile high on a hot dish, and garnish with fried parsley.
A fritter made from leftover roast chicken: marinate, batter, fry. The hinge is the batter — it needs its full hour's rest and the beaten white folded in at the last moment, or the coating turns heavy and slides off the meat.
- WineglassfulA wineglass in period cookbooks is roughly 2 fl oz, so half a one is about 2 tablespoons of brandy. That plus 1 tablespoon water and an egg yolk gives a thin coating batter, not a thick one.
- Salad oilSimply neutral or light olive oil — the term meant oil fit for dressing rather than a specific varietal. Any mild olive or vegetable oil works for the marinade.
- Pudding dishA baking dish, usually a deepish earthenware or china oval, used here only as a marinating vessel. Any non-reactive dish that holds the pieces in one layer will do; glass or ceramic, not bare aluminium, because of the lemon juice.
- Marinating timeThe recipe gives none. Thirty minutes to an hour at room temperature is enough for cooked meat, which absorbs little; longer refrigeration does no harm but the acid will make the surface mushy past a few hours.
- Resting the batter in a warm placeThis lets the flour hydrate and the gluten relax. A warm spot on the counter is fine — it does not need heat, and it should not be left long anywhere warm enough to matter for food safety, since it contains raw yolk.
- Smoking hot fatThe book gives no temperature; for fritters of this kind 'smoking hot' corresponds to roughly 350-375F. Many refined modern oils smoke well above frying temperature, so go by thermometer rather than by smoke; too hot and the brandy batter colours before the chicken heats through.
- Drain the chicken firstBlot the marinated pieces dry before dipping. Oil and lemon juice clinging to the surface will keep the batter from adhering and will spit in the fat.
- Fried parsleyWhole dry sprigs dropped into the hot fat for 10–15 seconds, until crisp and still green. Wet parsley will spatter violently, so dry it thoroughly.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. At a guess, two to three as a main course, though the quantity of batter is small for the remains of a whole chicken.
Recipes of this kind belong to the long tradition of the "réchauffé" -- the second appearance of a joint, dressed up so as not to look like leftovers. Frying cold cooked meat in a marinade and batter is the classic French treatment sold as fritot or chicken fritters, and English and American household books took it up widely in the second half of the nineteenth century. The name "à la Burgen" looks like an instance of the period's habit of attaching a vaguely continental name to a dish to raise its standing at table; no established sauce or garnish of that name appears to be documented. The economy of the dish is the point: the expensive part of the meal has already been eaten, and what remains is stretched with two spoonfuls of flour, an egg and a splash of brandy into something that can be sent up piled high on a hot dish with a green garnish.