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Chicken Patties
For the filling, use equal quantities of button mushrooms and diced, cooked chicken mixed with one-half the quantity of medium white sauce. Heat thoroughly and put into the cases.
A filling formula rather than a recipe with quantities, written for a cook who already knows what a patty case is and how to make white sauce. Everything is by proportion, so it scales to whatever you have.
- The proportions, made concreteRead as equal solids to half their combined volume of sauce, that comes to roughly 1 cup diced cooked chicken, 1 cup button mushrooms and 1 cup medium white sauce; note that "one-half the quantity" could also be read as half of a single measure rather than half the combined bulk. The sauce is meant to bind, not to swamp; if it pools in the shell you have used too much.
- Medium white sauceThe period standard is 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour and 1 cup milk, cooked until it coats a spoon. Thin was 1 tablespoon each per cup, thick was 3 to 4. The original specifies no seasoning; salt and white pepper are the obvious additions.
- "Cases"Almost certainly puff-paste patty shells, baked blind and hollowed, though the recipe does not specify; the small ones are what a French kitchen calls bouchées. Frozen puff pastry shells are the closest modern equivalent; bake them empty and fill at the last moment.
- Button mushroomsCanned or bottled mushrooms, already cooked and quite wet, were widely sold by this period and may well be what is meant. Using fresh mushrooms, sauté them in butter first until the liquid they release has evaporated, or the filling will thin out in the shell.
- Heat thoroughly, then stopBoth the chicken and the mushrooms are already cooked; the only object is to bring the mixture to serving temperature. Prolonged simmering breaks the sauce and shreds the chicken.
- Fill at the last minutePastry holds its crispness for a few minutes at most against a hot sauce. Have the shells warm and dry, the filling hot, and carry them to the table together.
- Yield and servingThe quantities suggested above make about six small patties; the original gives no yield or number of servings. A little chopped parsley or a few drops of lemon juice lifts what is otherwise a very mild dish.
Chicken patties belong to the vast category of made-over dishes — yesterday's roast, boiled fowl or joint reappearing in a form that did not look like leftovers. Puff-paste cases were the standard disguise: expensive-looking, individually portioned, and forgiving of small quantities of meat. The combination of diced chicken, mushrooms and white sauce is the same idea the French had already codified as a vol-au-vent à la reine, and the Butterick book, published by a pattern company for a home-sewing readership, offers it stripped of French names and reduced to a proportion any cook could remember. Button mushrooms in tins were among the conveniences available on such a cook's shelf, and the recipe calls for them without ceremony.