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Chicken En Casserole
I chicken
1 dozen potato balls
Olive oil, drippings or chicken I small carrot fat
Several small onions
1 pint brown stock
Salt
2 tablespoons butter
Pepper
1 dozen button mushrooms
Paprika
Wash and separate the chicken, and sauté in a little olive oil, drippings, or chicken fat, until well browned on all sides. Place in a greased casserole, add rich brown stock, cover, and cook in a moderate oven for an hour or more, according to the size of the chicken.
Meantime, melt the butter in a saucepan and brown in this the mushrooms and potato balls, slices of carrot, and tiny onions. Add more broth if needed and turn in these sautéd vegetables. Season with salt, pepper, and paprika. Leave uncovered in the oven long enough for the chicken to brown before serving.
The ingredient list has come through the scanner jumbled — "I chicken" is 1 chicken, and the columns of the original two-column list have run together. Read it as: 1 chicken, olive oil or drippings or chicken fat, several small onions, salt, pepper, paprika, 1 dozen potato balls, 1 small carrot, 1 pint brown stock, 2 tablespoons butter, 1 dozen button mushrooms.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is usually taken as about 350 to 375F. The final uncovered browning goes faster if the heat is raised for the last 10 to 15 minutes rather than left at the lower setting.
- The chickenA roasting or stewing fowl of this period was older and tougher than anything sold now, hence "an hour or more." A cut-up 3 1/2 to 4 lb chicken will be done in 40 to 50 minutes at 350F; check that the thigh reads 175F.
- Potato ballsCut with a large melon baller or parisienne scoop from peeled russets or Yukon Golds. A dozen means roughly one large potato. Keep them in cold water until they go in the butter, or they will darken.
- Brown stockThis is the classic roasted-bone stock of the period, reduced and full-bodied. A pint of good unsalted chicken or beef stock works; if it is thin, reduce it by a third first, since the dish is not thickened at any point.
- Button mushroomsThese were genuinely small immature caps at the time. Use whole cremini or white mushrooms no larger than 1 inch, or halve larger ones, so they hold shape through the browning and the final oven stint.
- SequenceThe vegetables are browned separately and added late on purpose — they are meant to keep their shape and their sautéed exterior rather than stew into the liquid. Add them in the last 20 minutes, not at the start.
- The casseroleHere a casserole is a covered earthenware or enamelled pot that goes from oven to table. Any lidded Dutch oven serves; if the lid is not tight, add a sheet of foil under it so the pint of stock does not cook away.
- YieldFour servings from a 4 lb bird. Serve straight from the pot with bread; the recipe gives no starch beyond the potato balls.
The covered earthenware casserole was being marketed hard to American households in this period as both a cooking vessel and a serving dish, a vogue that drew on French *en casserole* and *en cocotte* cookery and promised economy, since a slow covered pot could make an older, cheaper fowl tender. The garnish here is textbook period French service in miniature: turned or scooped potatoes, button mushrooms, small onions and carrot, each browned in butter and added at the end so they read as separate elements on the plate rather than as stew. Paprika, listed alongside salt and pepper, was fashionable in American cooking of the period, in part for its colour against a pale bird and a brown sauce.