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Chicken and Tomatoe
495. Cut up a young fowl. Put in a stew-pan one ounce of butter, a tea-spoonful of flour, and an onion chopped small. Brown them over the fire; and the pieces of chicken, with eight or ten tomatoes, and a saltspoon of salt. Cover the pan and stew till the tomatoes are dissolved, and the fowl thoroughly done. If it is a very young chicken, do not put it in at first, as half an hour will do it. Cold fowl will answer the purpose.
A plain one-pan fricassee where the tomatoes cook down into their own sauce. It needs almost nothing beyond attention to the pan and honest tomatoes.
- The hinge: let the tomatoes collapseThe sauce is nothing but tomato flesh broken down over low heat, so keep the pan covered and the flame gentle until the pieces lose their shape entirely, 30 to 45 minutes. If you rush it over high heat the liquid boils away before the pulp dissolves and you are left with scorched shreds rather than a sauce.
- Eight or ten tomatoesTomatoes of the period were generally smaller than modern ones, so read this as somewhere around 1½ to 2 lb — four or five modern large tomatoes, or two 14 oz tins drained of most of their juice. Peel and core fresh ones first or the skins roll up into strips in the finished dish.
- A young fowlA "young fowl" would likely be a smaller bird than a supermarket 5-pounder. Any 3 to 4 lb chicken jointed into eight pieces works; thighs and drumsticks hold up to the long covered stewing better than breast.
- MeasuresA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon — very light for 2 lb of tomatoes and a whole bird, so taste and correct at the end. One ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons; the teaspoon of flour is only enough to bind lightly, not to thicken.
- Brown properly before the liquid goes inButter, flour and onion browned together are the whole foundation of the flavour: take them to a nutty tan, not blond. Brown the chicken pieces in the same fat if you want more colour, then return everything to the pan together.
- The two-stage timingThe instruction to hold back a very young bird is sound. Start the tomatoes and onion alone, then add the chicken for the last 30 minutes so the sauce has time to reduce while the meat cooks just to 165F at the thigh.
- Cooked chickenWith leftover roast fowl, reduce the tomatoes to a sauce first and add the meat only for the final 5 to 10 minutes to heat through. Longer and it goes stringy.
- Yield and servingServes four. It wants rice, boiled potatoes or bread to take up the sauce, and a few basil leaves or a grind of pepper at the table is not out of keeping.