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Chicken, Maryland Style
I chicken
1 cup milk or cream
2 tablespoons flour
½ cup butter or other fat
Salt and pepper
Clean and disjoint chicken, leaving the breast whole. Put the neck and giblets into cold water and cook so as to obtain a cup of stock for the gravy. Arrange the chicken in a pan, being careful that no piece touches another. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and dot over with half of the butter or other fat. Bake in a hot oven from thirty to forty minutes, basting frequently with one-fourth cup of butter melted in one-fourth cup of hot water.
When the chicken is done, make a gravy from the fat left in the pan, stirring in two tablespoons of flour, one cup of milk or cream and the cup of stock made from the giblets. If desired, add a few button mushrooms. Serve the chicken with the gravy poured around it.
A baked variation on Maryland chicken, which is normally fried; the cream gravy is what makes it "Maryland style." Two things need attention: the oven temperature and the fact that modern birds are much larger than the ones this recipe assumed.
- Bird sizeA market "chicken" of this period was likely a small young bird, in the range of 2 to 3 lb; the recipe itself gives no weight, and it directs that the breast be left whole. A supermarket bird today runs 3½ to 4½ lb and will need longer, so go by temperature rather than the clock.
- Hot ovenRoughly 400 to 450F. The high heat is doing the work of the frying pan, browning the flour dredge into a crust.
- DonenessThirty to forty minutes is right for small pieces of a small bird. Modern bone-in thighs and a whole breast will want 45 to 55 minutes; cook to 165F in the thickest part of the breast and 175F at the thigh joint.
- No piece touching anotherThis is the hinge of the method. Crowded pieces steam instead of browning and the flour coating turns to paste. Use a pan large enough that there is space around everything, or use two.
- Basting liquidQuarter cup butter melted in quarter cup hot water gives a loose emulsion that bastes without washing the flour off. Baste every ten minutes or so; it also keeps the pan drippings from scorching.
- "Or other fat"Lard, bacon drippings or shortening, all ordinary roasting fats of the period. Butter tastes best here but browns fastest, which is another reason for the water in the baste.
- The gravyTwo tablespoons of flour to two cups of liquid (a cup of stock plus a cup of milk) gives a thin pouring sauce, not a thick gravy. Add the stock first, then the milk, and let it simmer a few minutes to cook out the raw flour taste.
- Button mushroomsThe original may well have meant canned or bottled buttons, which arrive already cooked. Fresh small mushrooms should be sauteed in the pan fat before the flour goes in.
- YieldFour servings, with about two cups of gravy.
Chicken Maryland is one of the few American regional dishes that traveled far enough to become an international restaurant term: by the early twentieth century "Chicken a la Maryland" appeared on hotel and restaurant menus in Europe, usually meaning floured chicken with a cream sauce and often garnished with corn fritters and bananas, which had little to do with Maryland kitchens. The domestic version, generally traced to Chesapeake cooking, is simply young chicken dredged in flour, cooked in fat, and served with a milk or cream gravy made in the pan. This oven method is a labor-saving translation of that idea. The instruction to make a cup of stock from the neck and giblets is a reminder that nothing came home from the butcher to be thrown away.