Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Braised Chickens
Braised Chickens
Take three young fat chickens and cut them into quarters; put a little butter at the bottom of a saucepan, and when it is melted add a layer of sweet herbs, a little onion, shallot and mushrooms, all chopped fine, and a large bunch of parsley. Place the legs first, and then the remainder of the fowls on them, sprinkle over a little more sweet herbs, cover over the pan, set it on the fire and place hot ashes on the lid. Let this cook for twenty minutes or so, then put the meat on a dish, pour a little melted glaze over the herbs, then pour over the chicken, and serve.
Braised Chickens, Montmorency Style Select a couple of chickens of equal size, draw and singe them and fill the insides with a paste made of butter, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and tie them up into shape. Put a saucepan of water on the fire, and when it boils dip the breasts of the birds in for a few minutes to make the meat firm. Lard the breast with thin strips of fat pork; put the chickens into an oval-shaped saucepan with several layers of fat pork around, but not over them; add a little good, freshly made broth (for if it has not been made fresh it will turn the meat red) to moisten; place the pan on the fire and cover the lid over with hot ashes to cook the bacon quickly; when this is a good brown color the ashes may be taken off and the fowls left to cook for thirty minutes very gently. Then take them out, remove the string and dish with a financiere garnishing.
Braised Chickens, Printaniere Take a large fowl or chicken, singe, draw and truss and put in a stewpan, add eight ounces of chopped bacon and fry the bird lightly. Scald and chop in small squares about half a pound of streaky bacon; put it in a stewpan with four small carrots and onions, season with salt, add a teacupful of broth; put the lid on the stewpan with some live embers on the top, stand it over a moderate fire and finish braising. Dish the chicken, mix some cooked peas with the vegetables and garnish the dish with them. Stir and mix an equal quantity of white sauce with the liquor, boil for a few minutes, strain, pour it over, and serve.
Three braises from the Waldorf line kitchen, written for cooks who had live coals, larding needles and a stockpot always on. The translation is mostly about heat management and about the fact that none of the three gives you a doneness cue you can trust.
- Hot ashes on the lidThis is top-and-bottom heat: embers on the lid brown the surface while the base simmers, the same principle as a Dutch oven with a flanged lid. A covered heavy pan in a 325-350F oven does the same work; where the recipe wants the pork to brown quickly, uncover and run the oven to 425F for ten minutes instead.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockThirty minutes of gentle braising will not carry two whole larded chickens to a safe 165F in the thigh, and the Montmorency birds are only briefly dipped in boiling water beforehand, which firms the breast and nothing more. Expect 60–75 minutes for whole birds; the quartered chickens in the first recipe are closer to the stated 20–25 minutes but should still be checked.
- Glaze"Melted glaze" is glace de viande — veal or chicken stock reduced until it is syrupy and sets solid when cold. A spoonful of demi-glace, or stock reduced by nine tenths, gives the same gloss and body. It is a seasoning, not a sauce; a tablespoon or two is enough for three chickens.
- Sweet herbsNot sugared anything: the period term for the soft aromatic herbs, chiefly parsley, thyme, marjoram, savory and a little tarragon or chervil. Chopped fine, they form the bed the chicken steams on.
- Draw, singe, lardDrawing means removing the innards, singeing means burning off pinfeathers over a flame — both already done for you. Larding the breast with fat pork was insurance against dry white meat; thin strips of salt pork or unsmoked bacon laid over the breast under the lid accomplish it without a larding needle.
- Fresh brothThe warning that stale broth "will turn the meat red" comes from a kitchen without refrigeration; the reason behind it is the cook's own and not verifiable. Use fresh unsalted stock and reduce the added salt accordingly, since the pork carries plenty.
- Financière and printanièreFinancière garnish is the grand-cuisine set of truffle, mushrooms, quenelles, olives and cockscombs; a plate of buttered mushrooms and a little truffle or olive is the reasonable modern reading. Printanière simply means spring vegetables — the carrots, onions and peas the recipe already names.
- Quantities to scale backEight ounces of chopped bacon to fry one bird, plus another half pound of streaky bacon in the braise, is line-kitchen scale; three or four ounces total is enough for a domestic pan. A teacupful of broth is about three quarters of a cup.
- YieldThe first recipe serves six to eight, the second four to six, the third three or four. All three want plain accompaniments — boiled potatoes, rice or bread — since the sauce is concentrated.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and the 1896 Cook Book collects the working repertoire of a hotel kitchen built on French grande cuisine as it stood just before Escoffier codified it. That is why the names are garnish names rather than dish names: printanière means finished with spring vegetables, financière means the expensive garnish of truffle, quenelles and mushrooms that a banquet customer was paying for, and Montmorency is a designation often associated with cherries, though it also functions as a classical garnish name, and here it labels a larded, pork-wrapped braise. The instruction to heap hot ashes on the lid dates the text as clearly as anything in it — coal and wood ranges gave a cook a top surface, a slow oven and a shovel of embers, and the embers were how you browned the top of a covered pan.