Home › C › Chicken Cutlets, French
Chicken Cutlets, French
(Cold Meat Cookery.) - INGREDIENTS for an entrée. The remains of cold roast or boiled fowl, fried bread, clarified butter, the yolk of 1 egg, bread-crumbs, 1/2 teaspoonful of CHICKEN, FRICASSEED. finely-minced lemon-peel; salt, cayenne and mace to taste. For sauce-1 oz. of butter, 2 minced shalots, a few slices of carrot, a small bunch of savoury herbs, including parsley, 1 blade of pounded mace, 6 peppercorns, 1/2 pint of gravy. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the cold fowl, 9d.
Cut the fowls into as many nice cutlets as possible; take a corresponding number of croutons about the same size, all cut one shape; fry them a pale brown, put them before the fire, then dip the cutlets into clarified butter mixed with the yolk of an egg; cover with bread-crumbs seasoned in the above proportion, with lemon-peel, mace, salt, and cayenne; fry them for about 5 minutes, put each piece on one of the croutons, pile them high in the dish, and serve with the following sauce, which should be made ready for the cutlets: put the butter into a stewpan, add the shalots, carrots, herbs, mace and peppercorns; fry for 10 minutes, or rather longer; pour in 1/2 pint of good gravy, made of the chickenbones; stew gently for 20 minutes, strain it, and serve.
TIME.-5 minutes to fry the cutlets; 35 minutes to make the gravy.
SEASONABLE from April to Juby.
Chicken, Fricasséed. - INGREDIENTS for an entrée for 8 persons.-2 small fowls, or 1 large one, 3 oz. of butter, a bunch of parsley and green onions, 1 clove, 2 blades of mace, 1 shalot, 1 bay-leaf, salt and white pepper to taste, 1/4 pint of milk, the yolk of 3 eggs. AVERAGE COST, 4s. 9d.
Choose a couple of fat plump chickens, and after drawing, singeing and washing them, skin and carve them into joints; blanch these in boiling water for 2 or 3 minutes, take them out and immerse them in cold water to render them white. Put the trimmings, with the necks and legs, into a stewpan; add the parsley, onions, clove, mace, shalot, bay-leaf and a seasoning of pepper and salt; pour to these the water that the chickens were blanched in, and simmer gently for rather more than 1 hour. Have ready another stewpan; put in the joints of fowl, with the above proportion of butter; dredge them with flour, let them get hot, but do not brown them much; then moisten the fricassée with the gravy made from the trimmings, &c., and stew very gently for 1/21 hour. Lift the fowl into another stewpan, skim the sauce, reduce it quickly over the fire by letting it boil fast, and strain it over them. Add the milk, and a seasoning of pounded mace and cayenne; let it boil up, and when ready to 1 CHICKEN PATTIES.
serve, stir to it the well-beaten yolks of 3 eggs; these should not be put in till the last moment, and the sauce should by made hot, but must not boil, or it will instantly curdle. A few button-mushrooms stewed with the fowl are by many persons considered an improvement.
TIME.-1 hour to make the gravy ; 1/2 hour to simmer the fowl.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian use for the remains of a roast fowl: pieces of cooked chicken crumbed, fried, and stood on matching croutons with a reduced brown sauce. The work is in the sauce, which wants starting before the cutlets go into the pan.
- Start the sauce firstThe instruction to have the sauce "ready for the cutlets" is the hinge of the dish. It needs about 35 minutes in all, while the cutlets take five, so build the gravy from the carcass bones before you crumb anything.
- The gravyHalf a pint here is an imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz, or about 1 1/4 US cups. The recipe assumes you already have 'good gravy, made of the chicken bones' to hand and does not say how long to make it; a good unsalted chicken stock is a fair substitute.
- Clarified butter and egg yolkThe coating is melted clarified butter beaten with a raw yolk, which sets the crumbs and browns better than butter alone. Warm the butter only to liquid, or the yolk will scramble in it.
- Frying timeFive minutes is enough because the chicken is already cooked. Fry over moderate heat, two to three minutes a side, until the crumbs are deep gold and the meat is hot through, around 165F at the centre.
- Cutting the cutlets"Cutlets" here means neat, evenly sized pieces cut from the cold fowl; the recipe specifies only that they be 'nice' and as many as possible. Trim them all to one outline so the croutons can be cut to match.
- CroutonsThese are slices of bread cut to the same shape as the cutlets and fried pale brown, not the small cubes the word means today. The recipe wants them about the same size as the meat and all of one shape.
- Mace and shalotsA blade of mace is one piece of the dried aril; a scant quarter teaspoon of ground mace stands in. Shalots are shallots, and two minced ones plus the carrot and herbs are fried a full 10 minutes to draw out colour before the gravy goes in.
- YieldThe recipe says only 'for an entrée' and gives no number of servings; how far it goes depends on how much meat the bird left. Strain the sauce and spoon a little over the pile rather than flooding the crumbs.
This belongs to the section of Victorian cookery books headed "Cold Meat Cookery", a genre of its own in households that roasted a large joint or bird and then had to account for it over several days without appearing to serve leftovers. The French dressing-up here is deliberate: cutting the remains into uniform cutlet shapes, standing each on a matching crouton, piling them high and masking them with a strained brown sauce turns Monday's fowl into an entree fit to be handed round. The costing given, ninepence exclusive of the fowl, is the point being made -- the expensive part of the dish had already been paid for. The seasonable note, April to July, reflects a poultry market that still followed the breeding year rather than a supply of chicken available in every month.