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Chicken in Baskets
To three cups hot mashed potatoes add three tablespoons butter, one teaspoon salt, yolks of three eggs slightly beaten, and enough milk to moisten. Shape in form of small baskets, using a pastry-bag and tube. Brush over with white of egg slightly beaten, and brown in oven. Fill with Creamed Chicken. Form handles for baskets of parsley. Chicken and Oysters à la Métropole 1/4 cup butter 1/4 cup flour 1/8 teaspoon pepper 2 cups cream 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups cold cooked chicken, cut in dice 1 pint oysters, cleaned and drained 1/3 cup finely chopped celery Make a sauce of first five ingredients, add chicken dice and oysters; cook until oysters are plump. Serve sprinkled with celery.
Two recipes run together here: piped duchesse potato baskets, and a creamed chicken and oyster filling that can go into them. Both are straightforward once the moisture content of the potato is right.
- The hinge: dry, stiff potatoThe piped baskets hold their shape only if the mashed potato is dry and stiff. Use baking potatoes, dry them in the pan over low heat after mashing, and add milk a spoonful at a time until the mixture just barely pipes. Anything looser will slump in the oven.
- Oven temperatureThe book says only 'brown in oven' and names no temperature. A hot oven, roughly 425-450F for 10-15 minutes on a lined sheet, will brown without drying. The egg-white wash sets the surface; a whole egg beaten with a spoonful of cream browns faster if you want more colour.
- Pastry bag and tubeThe book specifies only 'a pastry-bag and tube' and names no tip; a large open star tip works well. Pipe a flat spiral base about 2 1/2 inches across, then two or three rings around the rim to build walls. The parsley handle is decorative only and goes on after baking.
- Oysters need two minutes"Cook until oysters are plump" means exactly that and no longer: the edges ruffle and the bodies firm up within about two minutes in the hot sauce. Held longer they tighten and turn rubbery, and they will release enough liquor to thin the sauce.
- Two cups creamPeriod "cream" here is roughly today's light cream or half-and-half. Heavy cream makes the sauce very rich and thick once the oyster liquor is not counted on to loosen it; thin with a little milk if needed.
- Drained oystersA pint of shucked oysters is about 20-24 medium ones. Drain them well, but save the liquor -- a few tablespoons stirred into the finished sauce is the best seasoning it will get.
- Raw celery finishThe chopped celery is added at the table, not cooked. It is there for crunch and a fresh note against the cream, so chop it fine and keep it aside until serving.
- YieldThree cups of potato gives about eight to ten small baskets. The chicken and oyster mixture serves six generously, so it will fill the baskets with some left to spoon around them.
Duchesse potato piped into cups and shells was standard restaurant garnish work in the late nineteenth century, and that professional vocabulary -- pastry bag, tube, forcing potato into shapes -- found its way into domestic cookbooks, where it doubled as a way to serve creamed leftovers with some ceremony. Creamed chicken with oysters was a genuinely fashionable New England combination in this period, when oysters were cheap and abundant along the Atlantic coast and turned up in stuffings, sauces and stews rather than being treated as a luxury. The name "a la Metropole" points to the habit, common in American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s, of borrowing a hotel or restaurant name to dignify a dish; the Hotel Metropole was a name in use in several cities, and no particular kitchen can be documented as the source.