Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Stewed Chicken with Mushrooms
Stewed Chicken with Mushrooms
Cut a chicken into pieces and stew it gently in milk and water in equal parts, adding a small quantity of butter. Put a small lump of butter into a saucepan on the fire to melt, add two tablespoonfuls of button mushrooms, a seasoning of mace, white pepper and salt, and cook. Take out the chicken meat when done, drain it, put it into a saucepan with the mushrooms, warm them all up together, and serve. If more sauce is desired, a breakfast cupful of sweet cream may be added to the mushrooms when nearly cooked.
A plain white stew of the sort Oscar's kitchen turned out for invalids and light suppers as much as for the dining room. It is forgiving, but the milk needs watching.
- Keep the poaching liquid below a boilHalf milk, half water will break and curdle if it reaches a rolling boil. Hold it at a bare shiver, around 180F, and the chicken stays tender while the liquid stays smooth.
- The birdA whole 3.5-4 lb chicken cut into eight pieces is the right scale. Dark meat wants about 35-40 minutes at a gentle simmer, breast pieces nearer 20-25; pull the breast early and return it at the end rather than cooking everything to the same clock.
- "Two tablespoonfuls of button mushrooms"This may indicate bottled or tinned buttons, though the recipe does not say so, and it directs that the mushrooms be cooked in the butter. Two tablespoonfuls is a very small quantity for a whole chicken; several ounces of small fresh buttons will give a more generous dish, but that is more than the original calls for.
- A breakfast cupfulThe breakfast cup was the largest of the period's cups, usually reckoned at somewhere in the region of 8 to 10 fl oz. Take it as roughly a cup of cream -- 'sweet cream' means fresh rather than soured -- and add it by eye.
- MaceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg, warmer and less sweet than the seed. Ground mace is still sold; about a quarter teaspoon is enough for a whole chicken, and grated nutmeg at half the quantity is the nearest substitute.
- "On the fire"Simply the stovetop over moderate heat. Nothing here goes near an oven.
- The sauce needs bodyAs written the dish is chicken and mushrooms moistened with buttery cream, not a napping sauce. If you want it to coat, reduce the cream with the mushrooms for a few minutes before the chicken goes back in, or whisk a spoonful of the poaching milk into a small butter-and-flour roux.
- Don't waste the poaching liquidThe strained milk-and-water is a mild chicken broth. Reduce it hard and use it in place of some of the cream rather than pouring it away.
- YieldFour servings, with rice, boiled potatoes or toast to catch the sauce.
Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf, and the 1896 Cook Book that carries his name is a compilation collecting everything from grand service dishes to nursery food like this one. Stewing a fowl in milk and water is an English and American technique of long standing, valued because it keeps white meat pale and mild rather than browning it, and such dishes were often recommended for convalescents and children in the nineteenth century. The button mushrooms and the mace point to the same tradition: the seasoning is deliberately restrained, and mace was a familiar warm spice for white sauces and forcemeats. The instruction to add cream "if more sauce is desired" is typical of the book's shorthand, which assumes a cook who already knows what the dish should look like on the plate.