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Chicken a La King
2 tablespoons fat 2 tablespoons flour 1 cup milk 1 cup cream 2 egg-yolks 1 green pepper, minced 1 cup quartered mushrooms 1 pimiento cut in narrow strips 2 cups cooked diced chicken 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper Make a white sauce of the fat, flour, milk, cream, salt and pepper. Add the mushrooms, green pepper, pimiento and chicken. Cook until the meat is heated through. Just before serving stir in the egg-yolks, slightly beaten, and cook for a moment, stirring constantly. Serve at once on squares of hot toast.
A 1929 creamed chicken built on a rich egg-thickened white sauce. The only real technical demand is keeping the sauce below a simmer once the yolks go in.
- The hinge: the yolksOnce the beaten yolks are stirred in, the sauce must not boil or it will curdle into grains of scrambled egg. Pull the pan from the heat, stir the yolks in, and return it to low heat for under a minute.
- "Fat"Most likely butter, or the fat skimmed from the pot the chicken was cooked in. Butter is the straightforward choice; 2 tablespoons flour to the 2 cups of milk and cream gives a thin sauce, thickened further by the cream and the yolks.
- Cream"Cream" here is roughly today's light or heavy cream; either works. Using all milk makes a thinner, blander sauce that the yolks will struggle to carry.
- MushroomsRaw quartered mushrooms will shed liquid into the sauce and thin it. Saut\them them aside, then fold them in with the chicken, or accept a looser result.
- Green pepperMinced raw green pepper stays crunchy in the few minutes the dish is on the heat. Softening it in the butter before adding the flour gives a smoother texture and less bitterness.
- PimientoCanned sweet pimiento, drained and cut in strips, is what is meant. A jarred roasted red pepper is the closest substitute; it is sweeter and softer than fresh red bell pepper.
- ChickenTwo cups of cooked diced meat is about 3/4 lb of cooked breast and thigh, roughly half a small poached bird. Add it only to reheat: the meat is already cooked and will toughen if held at heat.
- SeasoningHalf a teaspoon of pepper is assertive by modern taste. White pepper would keep the sauce pale, though the recipe does not specify it. Season to taste at the end.
- Yield and servingServes four on toast squares, or three as a main course. It also fills patty shells or sits on rice or split biscuits; it does not hold well, so serve immediately as directed.
Chicken a la King belongs to the great American family of creamed made-over dishes -- ways to turn yesterday's roast or boiled fowl into something that looked deliberate. Its origin has never been settled: claims attach to Delmonico's in New York, to the Brighton Beach Hotel and a guest named King, and to a London chef cooking for an American patron, none of them firmly documented. By 1929 the dish was familiar enough that this book prints it without a word of introduction. The red flecks are the period's signature: canned sweet pimiento became a cheap pantry item in the United States around the turn of the century, and for a generation creamed dishes were flecked with it.