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Brown Fricassee of Chicken
Cut in pieces as directed for fricassee of chicken. Place one-quarter of a pound of salt pork or two ounces of butter in a frying-pan, and when hot, put in the chicken, leaving plenty of room to turn the meat; cook until each piece is of a rich brown tint. Remove the chicken and keep warm. Add two tablespoons of flour to the fat in the pan, stir well and when it has cooked two minutes, add a pint of boiling water. When the gravy is smooth and boiling replace the chicken, season with salt and pepper, cover the pan, and simmer gently until the chicken is tender; then add a teaspoon of onion juice, if not objectionable, and dish at once. The gravy will be found thick enough, and if the pan has a tight cover it will not be diminished even after a long cooking.
A straightforward brown fricassee: sear, make a roux in the rendered fat, then braise. The one thing that decides whether it works is the colour on the flour.
- The hinge: brown the roux properlyAfter the two tablespoons of flour go into the fat, the two minutes of stirring should take it to a nutty tan, not pale. This is what separates a brown fricassee from the white fricassee the recipe cross-references, and undercooked flour will leave the gravy tasting raw and pasty.
- Salt porkA quarter pound of salt pork means fat back or streaky salt pork, diced and rendered until the fat runs, with the cracklings lifted out before the chicken goes in. Thick-cut bacon substitutes acceptably but brings smoke the original does not have. If you use the two ounces of butter instead, add a spoonful of oil so it does not blacken during the browning.
- Cut in piecesJointing a whole bird into eight or ten is the usual reading: two drumsticks, two thighs, two wings, breast halved or quartered, back and neck likely in for flavour. A 3 1/2 to 4 lb chicken suits the method; a modern 6 lb roaster will not fit a frying-pan in one layer.
- Leaving plenty of roomTake this literally. Crowded pieces steam rather than brown. Do it in two batches in a 12-inch pan and use the same fat for both.
- A pint of boiling waterTwo cups, and the recipe is explicit that it goes in boiling, straight onto the cooked flour. Chicken stock in place of water gives a better gravy and costs nothing in effort.
- Onion juiceA period trick: a halved onion pressed on a grater or reamer, or grated and the pulp squeezed. A teaspoon of onion juice is roughly what you get from half a small onion. Grated onion added at the start of the braise does the same job with less fuss.
- Simmer gently until tenderExpect 30 to 40 minutes at a bare simmer, dark meat needing the full time. Breast pieces are done at about 20 minutes and can be lifted out and returned at the end so they do not go stringy.
- YieldOne bird serves about four, with roughly two cups of gravy, since the recipe notes a tight cover keeps it from diminishing. Rice, mashed potato or biscuits would suit it.
Fricassee is one of the oldest French cooking terms in English kitchens, in use since the sixteenth century for meat cut up, cooked in fat and finished in its own sauce — distinct from a stew begun in liquid. By the nineteenth century American cookbooks routinely split it in two: the white fricassee, thickened with cream or egg and kept pale, and this brown one, where the flour is coloured in the pan first. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book in the same spirit as its sewing manuals — as practical instruction for a household running without much hired help. The recipe itself leans on a single covered frying-pan and cross-references the preceding entry rather than repeating the jointing directions. The aside "if not objectionable" about onion is a small period marker, though what exactly it signalled to readers of the time is a matter of inference.