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Minced Chicken with Mushrooms
2 cups cooked chicken, fresh or canned 1 cup mushrooms 1/2 cup milk 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoon flour 1/4 teaspoon pepper Chop chicken moderately fine. Cut mushrooms into small pieces, boil them in their own liquor for five minutes, then skim them out and set aside to keep hot. Combine mushroom liquor and milk, make a white sauce with this liquid and the fat rubbed with the flour. Add mushrooms and chopped chicken, and cook three minutes, stirring continually. Add seasonings and serve on toast.
A 1920s creamed-chicken dish built to use up leftover roast fowl, thickened with a small quantity of sauce. Two points decide whether it works: the mushroom liquor and the consistency of the sauce.
- The mushroom liquor is the flavourThe instruction to boil the mushrooms in their own liquor points to canned mushrooms packed in liquid, common when this was written. With fresh mushrooms there is no liquor, so cook them in a spoonful of butter until they release their moisture and use that, topped up with milk or chicken stock; the recipe specifies only the 1/2 cup of milk and leaves the total volume of liquid open.
- Quantity of sauceOne tablespoon each of butter and flour gives a thin sauce; the recipe fixes only the 1/2 cup of milk, with the mushroom liquor added to it unmeasured. Thin appears to be the point: it should coat the chicken, not bind it into a paste. If it seems loose after the three minutes, let it reduce briefly rather than adding more flour.
- "The fat rubbed with the flour"This means kneading the butter and flour together cold into a paste and whisking it into the hot liquid, rather than cooking a roux first. It works, but the sauce needs a good two minutes at a simmer afterwards to lose any raw-flour taste.
- Chicken is already cookedThe three minutes is only to heat the meat through and let it take up the sauce. Longer and cooked breast meat turns stringy.
- Canned chickenCanned chicken was a respectable pantry staple in the period and is meant here as an equal option. It is saltier and wetter than roast meat; drain it and hold back some of the half teaspoon of salt until you have tasted.
- Season earlier than toldSalt and pepper go in at the end here, after the sauce is finished. Adding at least part of the salt to the sauce as it thickens seasons it more evenly.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; two cups of chicken will stretch to three or four servings on toast. Buttered toast with the crusts on holds up better than soft bread under the sauce.