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Chicken En Casserole
Wash and separate the chicken into pieces and sauté in a little olive oil or dripping, turning first on one side and then on the other until nicely brown. Transfer to a casserole, add a pint of rich brown stock, cover, and let cook in a moderate oven for an hour or more according to the size of the chicken. Meantime melt two tablespoons of butter in a saucepan
A straightforward braise, though the text breaks off mid-sentence in the middle of the finishing sauce. What survives is enough to cook from if you know where it was heading.
- The truncated endingThe recipe stops at "melt two tablespoons of butter in a saucepan." What follows is lost; the likeliest continuation is a roux -- butter with a roughly equal amount of flour -- whisked into the strained cooking liquid to thicken it before serving over the chicken, but the page does not say so.
- Moderate oven350F. The dish should sit at a bare simmer, not a boil; if the liquid is bubbling hard, drop to 325F.
- A pint of rich brown stockTwo cups of well-reduced brown stock, ideally veal or beef, not water-thin chicken broth. "Rich" is the operative word — the sauce is only as good as the stock, and modern boxed broth will need reducing by a third and seasoning before it earns the name.
- The casseroleHere it means the vessel: a lidded earthenware or enamelled cast-iron pot that goes from stovetop to oven. Brown the chicken directly in it and you keep the fond, which is most of the flavour.
- DrippingRendered beef or pork fat kept from roasting; beef is the usual sense. Any neutral fat works, and the recipe itself offers olive oil.
- An hour or moreThe recipe scales the time to the bird's size and expects at least an hour. Breast pieces are done at 165F internal and go dry well before the thighs; pull them early and return them to the sauce at the end if you care about texture.
- SeasoningThe original gives none. Salt and pepper the pieces before browning, and taste the finished sauce — a reduced stock plus a roux can turn salty fast.
- YieldA 3 1/2 to 4 lb chicken serves four. Serve with rice, noodles or boiled potatoes to take the sauce.
Casseroles had their own chapter in American cookbooks of the 1900s and 1910s because the vessel itself was fashionable — French-style glazed earthenware and the newly available fireproof glass and enamelware let a cook brown, braise and serve in one dish, which suited households with fewer servants and smaller kitchens. The word comes from the French for a saucepan, and in this period it still meant the pot rather than what came out of it; the shift in American usage to naming the food is later. What the recipe is really teaching is the standard French braise pared down for a domestic range: sear, moisten with brown stock, cook covered in gentle heat, then bind the liquor with a roux. That last step is the part the page loses where the text breaks off, for reasons we cannot establish.