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Deviled Chicken's Legs
Cut off the legs from three chickens and singe them slightly with a little alcohol lighted on a plate, put them into the stockpot and boil for ten minutes. Remove them to a dish, cool thoroughly, season with salt, pepper and a very little cayenne; also two tablespoonfuls of Worcestershire sauce and half a teaspoonful of ground mustard. Now roll them well together, pass one after another into sifted breadcrumbs, and broil them on a moderate fire for four minutes on each side. Then arrange them on a hot dish, pour over one gill of hot deviled sauce, sprinkle a little chopped parsley on the top, and serve very hot.
A late-Victorian chophouse standby scaled for a hotel kitchen with plenty of chicken legs on hand. Two things need attention: the doneness of the meat and the sauce the recipe assumes you already have.
- The hinge: cook the legs throughTen minutes in the stockpot plus eight under the broiler will not reliably bring a whole leg to 165F at the bone, and dark meat is better at 175F. Simmer the legs until they are actually cooked through, roughly 25-30 minutes for full leg quarters, then chill before crumbing so the broiling is only browning.
- Skip the lighted alcoholSingeing with burning alcohol on a plate was how a hotel kitchen removed hair and pinfeathers from birds plucked in-house. Supermarket chicken needs none of it; pull any stray quills with tweezers.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. That is a generous pour of sauce over six legs, so warm it and pass any surplus at the table.
- Deviled sauceThe recipe assumes the reader already has a deviled sauce to hand. Such sauces are generally a brown sauce sharpened with something acid and hot -- vinegar or wine, cayenne, often mustard and Worcestershire. A reduced stock or demi-glace whisked with Dijon, a spoonful of Worcestershire and a dash of vinegar and cayenne stands in for it.
- "Roll them well together"It means turning the legs in the seasoning paste so all of them take it up evenly, not rolling them into a shape. Let them sit in it fifteen minutes before crumbing.
- Getting the crumbs to stickSifted dry breadcrumbs cling to the wet mustard-and-Worcestershire coating, but a brush of melted butter over the crumbed legs helps them brown rather than scorch, and makes up for the fat lost in boiling.
- "A moderate fire"An overhead broiler set to medium with the rack six inches down, or a charcoal grill you can hold a hand over for four or five seconds. Fierce heat blackens the crumbs before the skin renders.
- YieldThe legs of three chickens gives six leg quarters, enough for three as a main course or six as a savoury or supper dish.
To "devil" a food is to season it hot and sharp with mustard, cayenne and something acidic, and the usage is documented in English cookery from the late eighteenth century onward, the name generally traced to the infernal heat of the seasoning. Deviling was above all a way with cooked meat: the bones and joints left from a roast fowl, scored, mustarded, crumbed and grilled, were standard breakfast, supper and club fare through the Victorian era, and the drumstick was its emblem. At the Waldorf, where Oscar Tschirky presided as maitre d'hotel, the same logic operated at hotel scale.