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Chicken Cutlets
2 cups cooked chicken 4 tablespoons chopped mushrooms 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon parsley 1/2 teaspoon onion-juice 1 tablespoon lemon-juice 2 tablespoons butter or other fat 1 tablespoon flour 1 cup milk or cream 4 eggs Mix the chicken, mushrooms, salt, pepper, parsley and the onion and lemon-juice. Make a white sauce with the fat, flour and milk or cream. Add the chicken, and cook for three minutes. Stir in two of the eggs beaten until light. Take from the fire immediately, pour into a greased, flat dish and set in a cold place for an hour or so. The colder the mixture becomes, the better it may be handled. Shape into cutlets, either in molds or with a knife, and sprinkle both sides of each cutlet with fine crums. Beat the other two eggs in deep plates. Dip the cutlets in the egg, then in crums, put them in a frying-basket, not crowding them and cook in deep fat for two minutes. Serve with Bechamel or mushroom sauce.
A croquette mixture in cutlet shape, built on leftover roast or boiled chicken. The whole thing turns on how cold and how finely cut the mixture is before shaping.
- Chop the chicken fineThe recipe only calls for "2 cups cooked chicken" and gives no direction on cutting, but the mixture will only shape and hold if the meat is cut small — something close to a coarse mince rather than chunks.
- The binding sauce is thinOne tablespoon of flour to a cup of milk gives a pouring sauce, not the stiff panade modern croquette recipes call for; the two beaten eggs and the chilling are what set it. The recipe allows an hour or so; chilling until genuinely cold and solid, longer if need be, makes the mixture easier to handle, as the text itself says.
- "Cook for three minutes" then off the heatOnce the eggs go in, the mixture must leave the heat at once, as written. Held over the flame it curdles and weeps fat when fried.
- Onion-juiceGrate half a small onion and press the pulp through a sieve, or squeeze it in a cloth. A quarter teaspoon of grated onion is a fair substitute.
- CrumsPeriod spelling of crumbs. Dry, fine crumbs — the sort made from stale bread grated or rolled — coat far better than fresh soft crumbs, which absorb egg and slide off.
- Deep fat temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature, only a two-minute frying time, which implies very hot fat — the range usually quoted for croquettes is around 375-390F. The filling is already cooked, so the frying is essentially for colour and crust.
- Loading the fryerChilled, breaded cutlets tend to stick to a wire basket and lose their coating. Lowering them in with a skimmer, a few at a time, is safer; return the fat to temperature between batches.
- YieldNo yield is given. Two cups of chicken bound with a cup of sauce will shape into something on the order of half a dozen to eight cutlets, depending on size.