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Chicken, Maryland Style
1 chicken 2 tablespoons flour Salt and pepper 1 cup milk or cream 1/2 cup butter or other fat Clean and disjoint chicken, leaving the breast whole. Put the neck and giblets into cold water and cook so as to obtain a cup of stock for the gravy. Arrange the chicken in a pan, being careful that no piece touches another. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and dot over with half of the butter or other fat. Bake in a hot oven from thirty to forty minutes, basting frequently with one-fourth cup of butter melted in one-fourth cup of hot water.
When the chicken is done, make a gravy from the fat left in the pan, stirring in two tablespoons of flour, one cup of milk or cream and the cup of stock made from the giblets. If desired, add a few button mushrooms. Serve the chicken with the gravy poured around it.
A baked rather than fried version of the Maryland treatment, defined by its cream gravy. The original assumes a young bird of about 2 to 2 1/2 pounds, which is why the timing is so short.
- Hot ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; in cookery of this period a "hot oven" is generally taken to mean somewhere around 400 to 450F. The chicken goes in hot and stays there for the whole time.
- Bird size and timingThirty to forty minutes suits a small broiler cut into pieces. A modern 3 1/2 to 4 lb chicken, jointed, will want closer to 45 to 55 minutes; cook to 165F at the thickest part of the thigh rather than by the clock.
- Pieces must not touchThis is the instruction that matters. Crowded pieces steam instead of browning, and the pan fat you need for the gravy never develops. Use a pan large enough that there is air between every piece, or two pans.
- Leaving the breast wholeThe recipe disjoints the bird but keeps the breast in one piece, which keeps it from drying out; carve it after cooking. Two bone-in breast halves left on the bone do the same job.
- Basting liquidA quarter cup of butter melted in a quarter cup of hot water, as the recipe directs. Baste frequently, every ten minutes or so.
- "Or other fat"The alternatives to butter would have been lard, bacon drippings or a vegetable shortening, all cheaper than butter. Butter browns best here.
- The gravyTwo tablespoons of flour into the pan fat, cooked a minute, then the stock and the milk or cream added gradually. If the pan fat is scant, make up the difference with butter so the flour has something to cook in.
- Button mushroomsThe original may well mean canned or bottled buttons, drained. Small fresh mushrooms sauteed in butter and added at the end are an alternative.
- YieldOne chicken with a cup of gravy serves four.