Minced Chicken with Mushrooms

A thrifty made-over dish built on a thin white sauce, printed here with its ingredient list scrambled into two columns by the original typesetting. Untangled, it is straightforward, but two points in the method assume conventions that have since fallen away.

• The ingredient list, sorted out2 cups cooked chicken (fresh or canned), 1 cup mushrooms, 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon flour, ½ cup milk, ½ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper. The creamed sweetbreads that follow call for 1 pair sweetbreads, 1 cup milk or cream, 1 tablespoon each butter, flour and parsley, and salt and pepper.
• "Boil them in their own liquor" means canned"Boil them in their own liquor" -- The phrase may point to a tin, whose packing liquid is then combined with the milk to make up the sauce; the recipe says 'fresh or canned' only of the chicken, so this is inference rather than instruction. Fresh mushrooms also give up liquid when stewed, which is what older books often mean by 'their own liquor'. If you cook them dry instead, sauté them in a little of the butter and make the sauce liquid up with milk or chicken stock.
• The sauce is deliberately thinThe sauce is on the thin side -- One tablespoon each of butter and flour is thickening ½ cup of milk plus an unmeasured amount of mushroom liquor, so the final consistency depends on how much liquor the mushrooms yield. If the mixture is loose enough to soak straight through the toast, go to 1½ tablespoons of each.
• Three minutes is all the chicken wantsEverything in the pan is already cooked. The three minutes are to heat through and let the flour lose its rawness; longer and the chicken goes stringy and dry.
• Season at the end, as writtenCanned mushroom liquor and canned chicken both carry salt, and the quantities given may be more than you need. Taste before adding the full half teaspoon.
• YieldEnough for four slices of toast as a light supper or luncheon dish, or two as a main course.
• "Prepare the sweetbreads" is doing heavy liftingThe period cook knew this meant soaking in several changes of cold water to draw the blood, blanching in acidulated water, then cooling under a weight and peeling off the membrane. That treatment parboils them; the recipe's instruction to heat them in the sauce assumes it has been done, and merely warming raw sweetbreads through is not enough.
• Buying sweetbreadsA "pair" is the heart and throat sweetbread of one calf, roughly a pound. They are now a special order from a butcher rather than a supermarket staple, and are best used within a day of purchase.