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Hollandaise
1 cup cold chicken 2 tablespoons butter Salt and paprika 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1/4 cup milk 1 egg Cook the chicken in the butter for five minutes; add the seasoning and lemon juice. When thoroughly mixed add the milk and the egg, well beaten. Stir until it thickens and serve in patty cups or on crackers.
Despite the name, this is not the emulsified butter sauce but a lemon-and-egg-thickened creamed chicken, of the sort served in pastry shells for luncheon. It comes together in about ten minutes and is unforgiving only at the end.
- The hinge: gentle heat at the finishOnce the beaten egg goes in, the mixture must be held below a simmer and stirred constantly, or the egg will curdle into threads rather than thicken the sauce. A heavy pan off direct heat, or a bowl over hot water, gives the most control.
- "Cold chicken" means already cookedThis is a leftovers dish: roast or poached chicken, diced small. The five minutes in butter is to warm it and pick up flavour, not to cook raw meat through.
- The stray last lineThe trailing "1/2 cup bread crumbs, 1/2 cup milk, 1 teaspoon butter" belongs to no step in this recipe and looks like the opening ingredients of the following entry, carried over in the typesetting. Ignore it, or use the crumbs as a browned topping if you bake the mixture in ramekins.
- Patty cupsSmall baked shells, usually of puff paste, of the kind now sold as vol-au-vent or bouchée cases. Frozen puff-pastry shells, or toast points, serve the same purpose.
- SeasoningPaprika here is the sweet Hungarian or Spanish kind used for colour and mild warmth, not smoked or hot paprika. A pinch of nutmeg is period-appropriate if you want more depth.
- YieldAbout one and a half cups of filling, enough for four small patty shells as a first course or two as a light lunch. It does not hold well; make it to order.
Some American household books of the period used "hollandaise" loosely, for pale sauces sharpened with lemon and enriched with egg rather than strictly for the emulsified butter sauce, which may be how a dish of creamed chicken with no butter emulsion at all could carry the name. The recipe belongs to the chafing-dish and luncheon tradition — small savoury mixtures spooned into pastry cases or piled on crackers, and useful for using up the remains of a roast fowl.