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Luncheon Dishes Chicken Patties
2 tablespoon butter 2 tablespoon flour 1 cup chicken stock 1/2 teaspoon salt few grains cayenne pepper 1 cup cold diced chicken Melt butter in saucepan; stir in flour; add chicken stock; season and bring to a boil; add chicken and cook slowly 5 minutes. Fill patty shells or bread cases and serve at once.
This is a small white-sauce filling — essentially a thick velouté carrying cooked chicken — meant to be spooned into ready-made shells at the last moment. The whole thing takes ten minutes once the chicken is cooked.
- The hinge: cook the roux before the stock goes inStir the butter and flour together over low heat for a minute or two before adding liquid, or the sauce tastes of raw flour. Add the stock gradually and whisk until it thickens; 2 tablespoons each of butter and flour to 1 cup of stock gives a sauce thick enough to sit in a shell without running out.
- "Few grains cayenne"About 1/16 teaspoon, or two light shakes. It is meant to sharpen the sauce, not to register as heat.
- Chicken stock matters hereWith only butter, flour, salt and cayenne for seasoning, the stock is the entire flavor. Homemade or a good low-sodium boxed stock; if you use a salty commercial broth, hold back the 1/2 teaspoon salt until you have tasted.
- Cold diced chickenCold cooked chicken of this kind would usually have been leftover roast or boiled fowl. Poached breast or pulled meat from a rotisserie chicken both work; dice it about 1/4 inch so it sits neatly in a small shell. It is already cooked, so the 5 minutes is only to heat it through and let it take up the sauce.
- Patty shellsThese were small puff-pastry cases, sold by bakers or cut at home from puff paste with a smaller round pressed partway through the center. Frozen puff pastry vol-au-vent shells are the direct modern equivalent; bake them empty and fill just before serving.
- Bread casesThe homemade alternative: cut 2-inch cubes from a firm white loaf, hollow out the centers, brush with melted butter and crisp them in a 400F oven for about 10 minutes.
- Serve at onceThe instruction is not decorative. A filled pastry shell goes soft within a few minutes, so hold the sauce warm over low heat and fill at the table's edge.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of filling — about six small patty shells, or four as a lunch portion with a salad.
Chicken patties belong to the luncheon course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when a light savory in a pastry case was a common way to feed ladies at midday or to fill out a buffet supper. The form descends from the French vol-au-vent and its smaller cousin the bouchée, and patty shells could often be bought ready-made from a baker — hence the offhand "fill patty shells or bread cases." The recipe also shows how useful the basic white sauce was in household cooking of the era: butter, flour, stock, salt, and one small pungent seasoning made a vehicle for whatever cooked meat, fish or vegetable the larder held, and books of this kind often printed the same base repeatedly with a different filling each time. The New Royal Cook Book was issued by the Royal Baking Powder Company, one of many free or near-free promotional cookbooks that reached American kitchens; it also carried dishes like this one, which need no leavening at all.