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Mock Terrapin
1½ cups cold cooked chicken or veal, cut in dice 1 cup White Sauce I Yolks 2 "hard-boiled" eggs, finely chopped Whites 2" hard-boiled" eggs, chopped 3 tablespoons Sherry wine ¼ teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne Add to sauce, chicken, yolks and whites of eggs, salt, and cayenne; cook two minutes, and add wine. 2 cups scalded milk ⅛ cup butter 1/8 cup flour 1 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper Chicken Soufflé 1/2 cup stale soft bread crumbs Whites 3 eggs, beaten stiff 2 cups cold cooked chicken, finely chopped Yolks 3 eggs, well beaten 1 tablespoon finely-chopped parsley Whites 3 eggs, beaten stiff Make a sauce of first five ingredients, add bread crumbs, and cook two minutes; remove from fire, add chicken, yolks of eggs, and parsley, then fold in whites of eggs. Turn in a buttered pudding-dish, and bake thirty-five minutes in a
A quick chafing-dish supper built from leftover roast chicken or veal, cream sauce, hard-boiled eggs and sherry. The only real technique is restraint: everything is already cooked, and the sauce simply binds it.
- White Sauce IThe book's basic milk sauce, made by cooking butter and flour together and whisking in scalded milk; a roux of roughly equal parts butter and flour to a cup of milk gives the right body. Make it a touch thick, since the diced meat and egg will loosen it.
- Salt quantityThe salt figure has lost its fraction in printing; a quarter teaspoon suits the volume here. The recipe adds it with the chicken and eggs, before the two minutes' cooking and the sherry, so season lightly if the sauce and leftover meat already carry salt.
- Why the yolks and whites are kept apartThe chopped yolks dissolve into the sauce and thicken it, standing in for terrapin liver and eggs; the whites stay in visible flecks. Chop them separately or the effect is lost.
- Two minutes means two minutesThe meat is cooked already. Longer heating dries diced chicken and makes veal stringy, and the sauce will tighten past pouring consistency.
- Add the sherry off heatAdd the sherry last -- the wine goes in after the two minutes' cooking, so its aroma is not driven off. A dry amontillado or a medium sherry both work; avoid anything labelled cooking sherry.
- Cayenne"Few grains" is a genuine pinch, perhaps a sixteenth of a teaspoon. It should register as warmth behind the sherry rather than as heat.
- Yield and servingServes three or four as a light main course. Traditionally spooned onto toast points, into puff-pastry shells, or into ramekins with a few crumbs browned on top.
Diamondback terrapin was a luxury of nineteenth-century American dining, stewed in cream and finished with sherry and hard-boiled egg yolk, and priced accordingly; by the time this book was in wide use the wild stocks along the Atlantic coast were being fished hard enough that the dish had become a special-occasion extravagance. "Mock" dishes were the standard household answer to that problem, in the same spirit as mock turtle soup made from a calf's head. Here the sherry, cayenne and chopped egg do all the identifying work, and cheap cold chicken or veal supplies the body.