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Fricasseed Chicken
I chicken
1 egg-yolk
2 tablespoons butter or other Salt and pepper fat
Herbs
2 cups chicken stock
Salt pork
2 tablespoons flour
Rice or dumplings
1 cup milk or cream
Singe, clean and cut up the chicken. Brown in a pan with the butter, drippings or chicken fat. Cover with boiling water, add salt, pepper, herbs and a few slices of salt pork. Simmer until tender (about an hour), strain and thicken one pint of the liquor with the flour mixed to a smooth paste with a little cold water; add the milk or cream beaten with the yolk of the egg. Heat again until slightly thickened, pour over the chicken and serve with rice or dumplings.
A plain white fricassee: brown, simmer, then finish the cooking liquid with flour, cream and egg yolk. The ingredient list has been mangled by the book's two-column typesetting, so read it as chicken, butter or other fat, chicken stock, milk or cream, egg yolk, flour, salt pork, herbs, salt and pepper, and rice or dumplings to serve.
- The hinge: the egg yolkOnce the yolk and cream go in, the sauce must not boil or it will curdle into threads. Hold it below a simmer, around 170-180F, and stir until it just coats the spoon. Tempering a ladle of the hot thickened liquor into the yolk mixture first makes this much easier.
- What bird this assumes"1 chicken" in a book of this period is more likely a mature fowl than a young broiler, tough enough to want a long simmer; the recipe allows about an hour. A modern 3.5-4 lb broiler will be done in 35-45 minutes, and the breast pieces sooner than the legs; pull them as they finish.
- SingeingInstruction for a freshly plucked bird with pinfeathers still in the skin, held briefly over a flame. Supermarket chicken needs nothing but a check for stray quills.
- Stock and "one pint of the liquor"The two cups of stock in the list appear to be an alternative to the boiling water in the method, which never calls for them; using stock gives better flavor. Either way the recipe has you thicken one pint (2 cups) of the strained cooking liquid, so reduce or top up to that amount before starting the sauce.
- Salt porkA few slices of unsmoked cured pork, usually from the belly or side, sold under that name. Blanched bacon will do, though it brings smoke the original does not intend. Salt the dish lightly at the start and correct at the end, since the pork and any stock both contribute salt.
- HerbsUnspecified, as is common in books of this period. A bay leaf, a few parsley stems and a sprig of thyme suit this sauce; strain them out with the liquor.
- ThickeningFlour slaked with cold water gives a slightly raw, starchy edge. Let the thickened liquor bubble gently for two or three minutes to cook the flour out before the cream and yolk go in, after which it must not boil at all.
- YieldFour to six servings with rice or dumplings. If you want dumplings, drop them onto the simmering chicken in its cooking liquid before straining, cover, and cook 12-15 minutes; the finished sauce is too delicate to steam them in.
Fricassee is one of the oldest surviving French cooking terms in English kitchens, in use since the sixteenth century for meat cut up, cooked in fat and then finished in its own liquid with a sauce -- halfway between a saute and a stew. The white version, bound at the last moment with cream and egg yolk, is a liaison straight out of classical French practice, and its appearance in a mass-market American household book of the early twentieth century shows how thoroughly that technique had been domesticated. The recipe may also reflect the economics of poultry before commercial broiler farming: a hen was kept for eggs and eaten when she stopped laying, which would account for a method that assumes browning followed by a long simmer rather than roasting, and for the addition of salt pork, though the recipe itself gives no reason. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published this and similar volumes for the same audience that bought its magazines.