Creole Chicken
1 chicken. 1 onion. 1 can tomatoes. 1 can mushrooms. 1 pepper. Seasonings. Boil one hen until tender, then tear to pieces.
Sauce for chicken. Cut one onion into small pieces, and fry in butter until yellow--using spider. Cut into this one green pepper, one can tomatoes, one can of mushrooms, salt and pepper to taste. One tablespoon sugar, one teaspoon Worcester sauce. Cook this mixture until thoroughly done, then add chicken, cover and let cook until well seasoned.
A stewed fowl in a tomato-pepper sauce, written in the shorthand of a cook who assumed you knew what a hen and a spider were. Two things need translating and one needs timing.
- "One hen"A stewing hen is a mature laying bird, 4-6 lb, tough and deeply flavored. Supermarkets sell them rarely; a 4-5 lb roasting chicken works, or thighs and drumsticks if you want the collagen without the hunt.
- Boiling until tenderAn old hen wants 2 to 3 hours at a bare simmer; a modern roasting chicken is done in 60 to 75 minutes, and breast meat much sooner. Cook it in salted water with an onion and a bay leaf and keep the broth.
- A spiderA cast-iron skillet, originally one with legs for standing over coals. Any heavy 10- or 12-inch skillet does the job.
- Can sizesA period can of tomatoes usually ran a pound to a pound and a quarter (the common No. 2 can held about 2 to 2 1/2 cups); a 15-oz can is close enough, or a 28-oz can if you want more sauce. Canned mushrooms then were commonly sold in small tins of a few ounces drained -- 8 oz of fresh mushrooms, sliced and browned with the onion, is better.
- "Cook until thoroughly done"The point is reduction. Let the sauce simmer uncovered 20 to 30 minutes until it no longer tastes thin or raw-tomato sharp, then add the chicken. The tablespoon of sugar is there to balance the acid of the tomatoes, not to sweeten; taste before adding it all.
- The final cookCovered, 15 to 20 minutes is enough for the meat to take up the sauce. Longer and shredded cooked chicken turns stringy and dry. Loosen with a little of the reserved poaching broth if it tightens.
- Seasonings"Seasonings" here means salt and pepper at minimum; the recipe names both later. Cayenne, thyme, garlic and a bay leaf all sit comfortably in this sauce.
- Yield and servingServes about 6. Rice is the obvious bed; buttered noodles or toast points would also suit it.
"Creole" on a cookbook page rarely meant Louisiana cooking in any strict sense -- it had become shorthand for a sauce of tomatoes, onion and green pepper, the same convention that gave the era its Creole eggs, Creole macaroni and Creole cod. The thrift shows: a stewing hen too old to roast is boiled tender, torn by hand, and stretched into six servings by two cans off the pantry shelf. Canned tomatoes and canned mushrooms were the modern conveniences of the moment.