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Chicken Patties
For the filling, use equal quantities of button mushrooms and diced, cooked chicken mixed with one-half the quantity of medium white sauce. Heat thoroughly and put into the cases.
A skeleton recipe of the kind common in made-over dish chapters: the proportions are given, the rest is assumed. Two things need filling in — what the "cases" are and what a medium white sauce means.
- The casesThese are baked patty shells — puff pastry vol-au-vent cups, or the bread "toast cups" made by pressing buttered slices into muffin tins. Frozen puff pastry shells, baked and hollowed, do the job. Fill them at the last moment or the pastry softens.
- Medium white sauceThe standard of the period is 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons flour cooked together, then 1 cup milk whisked in and simmered until it coats a spoon. Half the quantity of the combined chicken and mushrooms means roughly half a cup of sauce per cup of filling.
- Button mushroomsCanned or bottled mushrooms, already cooked, were widely available and commonly used for fillings of this kind. Fresh mushrooms should be sliced and sautéed in butter until their liquid has cooked off, or the filling will thin out in the shells.
- SeasoningNo seasoning is specified. Salt, white pepper, and a little sherry or lemon juice bring the sauce up; nutmeg is a common addition to a white sauce of this type.
- Heat thoroughlyThe chicken is already cooked, so this is a matter of bringing the mixture to a bare simmer. Prolonged cooking dries out the diced meat and breaks the sauce.
- Quantities and yieldOne cup of diced chicken with one cup of mushrooms takes about a cup of sauce, which will fill several standard patty shells — enough for a light lunch or supper, or a first course.