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Baltimore Chicken
Cut chicken in pieces for serving; sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip in egg, and crumbs taken from the center of the loaf; arrange in baking dish, baste with melted butter, and cook in hot oven twenty to thirty minutes. Arrange on a hot platter; garnish with thin slices of crisp bacon, parsley and cream sauce.
Chicken fried in Batter Cut chicken in pieces for serving, cover with fritter batter, and cook in deep fat. Drain on brown paper. In order that chicken in batter be cooked sufficiently, the bird must be young and tender.
Cold chicken meat may be dipped in the same batter and fried.
Two related methods for a cut-up bird: oven-baked in crumbs, and battered and deep-fried. Both were written for smaller, younger chickens than the ones sold now, and the timings show it.
- The hinge: cooking timeTwenty to thirty minutes will not bring bone-in pieces from a modern 3-4 lb chicken to a safe 165F. Allow 40-50 minutes in a hot oven, and check the thickest part of the thigh with a thermometer rather than trusting the clock.
- "Hot oven"No temperature is given in the book; in cookery of this period a hot oven is generally taken as somewhere around 400-450F. Ovens were judged by hand or by a flour test rather than a dial. The crumb coating browns fast at this heat, so shield the dish loosely with foil if the crust colors before the meat is done.
- Crumbs from the center of the loafSoft fresh breadcrumbs from the interior crumb of a white loaf, not dried or toasted crumbs. They absorb the butter and stay tender; packaged dry crumbs give a sandier, harder crust.
- Basting with melted butterSoft crumbs will scorch if left dry. Pour a few tablespoons of melted butter over the pieces before baking and again halfway through, or the coating turns to grit at the edges.
- Cream sauceA plain white sauce: about 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, and a cup of milk or light cream, seasoned with salt and a little white pepper. Serve it alongside rather than pouring it over the crumbs.
- Fritter batter and fat temperatureA fritter batter of this period is a thick flour-egg-milk batter. Fry at 350-365F; hotter and the batter sets brown before the meat cooks through, which is exactly why the book insists on a young, tender bird.
- The cold-chicken versionBattering already-cooked meat is the safer of the two frying options, since the batter only needs to color. Two or three minutes per piece is enough.
- DrainingBrown paper meant butcher's or grocer's wrapping. Use a wire rack over a sheet pan; paper towels trap steam and soften the crust underneath.
- YieldOne chicken cut into eight to ten serving pieces feeds four, with the bacon and sauce.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston to promote its chocolate and cocoa, and like most such books it padded out the confectionery with a full domestic-science curriculum: Maria Willett Howard compiled it in the Fannie Farmer mold, with level measurements and dishes named for cities. "Baltimore" attached itself in this period to chicken cooked with a crumb coating and served with cream gravy and bacon, a genteel restaurant-and-hotel treatment distinct from the skillet frying of Southern home kitchens; the association is traditional rather than traceable to any single cook or establishment.