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Chicken Patties
Roll puff paste, made as directed under "Pastry," to the thickness of one-fourth of an inch and with a cooky cutter shape into circles about the size of a silver dollar. Remove centers from one-half these circles, using a much smaller cutter for the purpose. Brush the edges of the uncut circles and fit on to them the rings, forming a little wall and leaving a cavity in the center. Chill thoroughly before baking in a very hot oven. These shells may be prepared the day before and re-heated when needed. The small centers removed from the puff paste circles should also be baked and used as lids to the patties when finished. For the filling use equal quantities of button mushrooms and diced cold chicken (previously cooked) moistened with white sauce.
This is a recipe for bouchées — small puff-paste shells — with a creamed chicken filling. The pastry work is straightforward, but everything depends on temperature.
- Chill, then bake hotThe instruction to chill thoroughly before baking is the hinge. Cold, firm butter layers turn to steam in a hot oven and drive the pastry up; a shell assembled and baked warm will slump sideways and the cavity will close.
- "A very hot oven"In books of this period this is usually taken as roughly 450-475F. Bake until the walls are set and deep gold, perhaps 15-20 minutes for shells this size, and let them dry a few minutes longer if the interiors look damp.
- Silver dollar sizeA silver dollar is about 1½ inches across. The inner cutter should be roughly ¾ inch, leaving a wall about ⅜ inch wide — thinner than that and the ring collapses.
- Button mushroomsThese were commonly sold canned or bottled at this date, already cooked and drained, though the recipe does not say which is meant. Fresh button mushrooms need to be sauteed in butter until their water has gone before they join the sauce, or the filling will thin out.
- White sauceA basic white sauce: roughly 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons flour to 1 cup milk or chicken stock, cooked until it coats a spoon and seasoned with salt and white pepper. Use less liquid if you want it thicker, since a loose sauce softens the pastry from the inside.
- Cooked chickenEqual quantities of diced poached or roast chicken and mushrooms, as the recipe directs, moistened with enough sauce to bind. Shells this size hold only about a tablespoon each, so a cup of each will fill a good many more than a dozen. Bring the filling to a simmer and spoon it in at the last minute, into shells still warm from a low oven.
- Made a day aheadThe shells keep well in a tin at room temperature and crisp again in 5 minutes at 350°F. Do not fill them in advance.
- ServingTwo or three per person as a luncheon course or a first course, lids set on at an angle.
Small puff-paste cases filled with a creamed mixture descend from the French vol-au-vent and its miniature form, the bouchée; the English word "patty" in this sense is generally traced to pâté, a pastry-enclosed filling. Creamed chicken with mushrooms was one of the standard American luncheon and reception dishes of the period, close kin to the chafing-dish cookery then fashionable, and the white sauce is what actually makes the dish — the chicken is leftovers and the mushrooms are a garnish. The Butterick company, better known for dress patterns, published its cook book for the same readership it sold sewing patterns to: women managing a household without professional staff, for whom a dish that could be part-built the day before was worth printing.