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Chicken En Casserole
2 tablespoons butter 2 cups hot water 6 mushrooms 1 carrot cut in cubes 2 potatoes cut in cubes 3 small onions sliced Salt and pepper Flour and water Prepare the chicken as for fricassee; sauté in butter in a frying pan; transfer to casserole; add hot water and cook in a moderate oven for about one hour and a quarter. Before the time is up sauté the vegetables in butter until brown; remove to the casserole; add the seasoning; cover and return to the oven for another half hour. To retain the flavor press dough upon the dish where vessel and cover meet; remove before serving,
A straightforward oven braise, though the ingredient list omits the main item and assumes you know what "as for fricassee" means. A few gaps to fill before you start.
- The missing chickenNo quantity is given. "Prepare the chicken as for fricassee" means a bird cut into serving pieces — legs, thighs, wings, breast halved, back and neck included for flavor. A cut-up fryer of around 3 1/2 to 4 lb suits the amount of liquid and vegetables here, though the recipe itself specifies no size.
- Casserole means the dishHere "casserole" is the lidded earthenware or enameled vessel itself, which is what en casserole refers to. A 4- to 5-quart Dutch oven with a tight lid is the modern equivalent.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350F; period usage for "moderate" spans about 350–375F. At that temperature an hour and a quarter plus a further half hour brings the meat well past the 165F safe point and into the falling-off-the-bone range, which is the intent.
- The flour-and-water is a seal, not a sauceThis is the hinge of the recipe. The "flour and water" in the ingredient list makes the stiff paste — a luting paste — that you press into the seam between pot and lid. It bakes hard, traps every bit of steam and aroma, and is chipped off and discarded before serving. Modern heavy lids do most of this work, but the paste genuinely concentrates the flavor.
- Two cups of liquid is correctIt looks scant, but this is a braise, not a stew. Sealed, the pot loses almost nothing, and the chicken and vegetables give up their own juices. Do not top it up.
- Browning matters twiceSauté the chicken pieces in the butter until genuinely colored, not merely pale, and do the same with the carrot, potato, onion and mushrooms toward the end of the first bake, as the recipe directs. Both browning steps are the main source of depth here — there is no stock, wine or herb in the recipe.
- MushroomsSix mushrooms of the period would have been small buttons; reckon on about 4 oz, halved. Adding them with the other vegetables rather than at the start keeps them from disintegrating.
- Thickening and yieldThe dish comes out as chicken in a thin, buttery broth. If you want gravy, lift the meat and vegetables out and reduce the liquid, or whisk in a little of the flour-and-water. No yield is given; a bird of the size assumed above would serve about four.
The sealing of the lid with flour paste is much older than the book -- the technique is generally traced to French and English pot-roasting practice, where a stiff dough was luted around the join to keep the steam in before well-fitting metal lids were common, and it survives today in the paste-sealed poulet en cocotte and in the Italian habit of sealing a terracotta pot with bread dough.