To Fry Chicken
Cut as for sauteing, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dip in finely ground crumbs, then in egg, then again in crumbs. Use a frying basket, dip in hot fat and let fry a delicate brown. Garnish with celery and water cress.
A terse deep-fry method that assumes you already know how to joint a bird and manage a kettle of fat. Two things need filling in: the fat temperature and the fact that bone-in pieces will brown long before they cook through.
- The hinge: fat temperatureHold the fat at 350-365F. Hotter and the double crumb coating darkens to "a delicate brown" in three or four minutes while the meat at the bone is still raw; cooler and the breading absorbs grease. A thermometer in the fat is worth more than any visual cue.
- Doneness, not colourColour is the wrong signal here. Take the thickest pieces to 165F at the bone, which for a fully submerged thigh or drumstick means roughly 12-15 minutes at 350F. Breast and wing pieces come out several minutes sooner, so fry in batches by size rather than all at once.
- "Cut as for sauteing"Presumably jointed into serving pieces: wings, drumsticks, thighs, and the breast split, with the back reserved for stock; the sauteing entry she is pointing to would give the actual instruction. Cutting the breast halves across, so nothing in the basket is thicker than about an inch and a half, helps the pieces cook evenly.
- Crumbs, egg, crumbsThe double coating is deliberate, and it works well for deep frying, though note the order begins with crumbs rather than the more usual flour. "Finely ground crumbs" are dried bread crumbs, finer than modern panko; beat the egg with a spoonful of water or milk so it flows and clings. Letting the coated pieces stand ten minutes before frying helps the breading hold instead of sloughing into the fat.
- The frying basketA basket lowers everything in and lifts everything out at once, but coated chicken can weld itself to the mesh. Oil the basket, or lower the pieces in with tongs and use the basket only to lift them clear. Any pot deep enough to submerge a thigh with three inches of headroom will do.
- The fat itselfThe recipe specifies only "hot fat"; in this period that would most likely have been lard or a commercial shortening. Any neutral fat with a smoke point above 400F works, and any flavour difference is slight under a crumb crust.
- Yield and servingOne 3 1/2 to 4 lb chicken cut this way serves four. Drain on a rack rather than paper so the crust stays crisp, and hold uncovered in a 200F oven while later batches fry. The celery and watercress garnish is a period touch and does no harm.
Mary A. Wilson wrote for a Philadelphia readership just after the First World War, and her books have the compression of domestic-science instruction: short paragraphs, no wasted words, and an assumption that the cook has already read the entries around this one. That is why this recipe cross-references her own sauteing instructions instead of describing the cut. Deep-fried breaded chicken, distinct from the pan-fried Southern style, appears in commercial and institutional cooking of the period, where a standing kettle of fat and a wire basket were part of the equipment. The watercress-and-celery garnish is a period convention: something green and raw on the plate, whether or not anyone ate it.