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Fricasseed Chicken
Cut a chicken into eleven pieces, brown in a pan with two tablespoons of butter or dripping. Cover with boiling water, add salt, pepper (a small bunch of herbs if liked) and a few slices of salt pork. Simmer until tender, (about an hour). Strain, skim the fat from the liquor, make a sauce with one tablespoon of butter, two of flour and one-pint of the liquor. When slightly cooled, add a cup of milk or cream, beaten with two yolks of eggs. Heat again until slightly thickened, pour over the chicken and serve with rice or dumplings.
FRIED SPRING CHICKEN (Southern Style) Cut a small chicken in four or six pieces, dip each piece hastily in cold water, then sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roll the pieces in plenty of flour. Have some sweet lard heated very hot in a frying-pan, and fry the chicken until each piece is of a rich brown hue on both sides. Take up, drain well, and arrange the pieces on a warm platter, setting the dish in a hot place to keep the meat from cooling while the gravy is being made. Pour out of the pan all but a tablespoon of the fat, and stir into the pan a cup of milk. When the liquid is hot and well stirred, thicken to a rich cream with one tablespoon of flour rubbed smooth in one tablespoon of butter. Boil two or three minutes, stirring constantly, season with salt and pepper, and pour the gravy over the chicken. A little chopped parsley is often added to the gravy. If butter is used in place of lard it is difficult to manage, as it burns so easily.
Two related dishes in one entry: a white fricassee finished with an egg-yolk liaison, and a Southern skillet fry with milk gravy. The fricassee's only delicate moment is the yolks, and it is worth planning for.
- The hinge: tempering the yolksBeat the yolks with the milk or cream, then stir a ladleful of the hot sauce into them before returning the mixture to the pan. Hold it below a simmer after that — around 180F — or the yolks will curdle into threads and the sauce will break.
- Eleven piecesThe bird broken down small: legs, thighs, wings, the breast divided, and the back cut up as well, rather than a modern eight-piece cut. Any eight- or ten-piece cut works; the point is uniform sizes that finish together.
- Simmering timeAn hour suits an older stewing hen. A modern supermarket bird is much younger — breast pieces are done in 20 to 25 minutes, legs and thighs in 35 to 40. Pull the white meat out early and let the dark meat carry on, or it will be dry and stringy.
- Salt pork and saltThe pork slices season the broth as well as enrich it. Salt lightly at the start and correct once the sauce is reduced and the pork has given up its salt, or the finished dish will be over-seasoned.
- Sweet lard"Sweet" here means fresh and unsalted, not sugared. Leaf lard or a good rendered pork fat is the right substitute; modern shortening will not brown the crust the same way. Heat it to about 340-350F and keep an inch or so in the pan.
- "Spring chicken"A young bird of a pound and a half to two and a half pounds, closest today to a small broiler. One such bird gives the four to six pieces the recipe asks for.
- The gravy proportionsOne tablespoon each of butter and flour to a cup of milk gives a thin gravy on purpose — it should coat, not cling. If you want it heavier, use two tablespoons of flour and expect to add a splash more milk as it boils.
- YieldThe fricassee serves about four; the fried spring chicken, from one small bird, rather fewer. The sauce, at a pint of broth plus a cup of dairy, is generous enough to want the rice or dumplings.
Fricassee — from the French fricasser, traditionally glossed as to cut up and cook in fat, though the word's origin is disputed — reached English kitchens in the sixteenth century and by the nineteenth had settled into the American form seen here: browned chicken stewed in its own broth and finished with a pale, egg-thickened sauce, the technique the French call a liaison. It was a common use for a bird past its laying prime, since an hour of gentle simmering does what roasting cannot. That The Butterick Cook Book (1911) prints the fry immediately after it, and marks it "Southern Style," reflects how regional the flour-dredged, lard-fried version still seemed to a national publisher based in New York; Butterick sold dress patterns to the whole country and its cookbook took much the same approach, gathering local dishes under general headings. The closing note that butter "is difficult to manage, as it burns so easily" is a reminder that lard was an everyday frying fat in American kitchens well into the twentieth century, and butter the luxury reserved for sauces.