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Stewed Chickens with Tomatoes
Cut a chicken into five pieces and put the legs, wings and body into a flat stewpan with a little oil, two or three small onions, a clove of garlic and a bunch of parsley. Place the pan on a moderate fire, and let it remain until the meat is half cooked. Then add the fillets and pieces cut off the breast and sprinkle them over with salt and pepper; return the pan to the fire and complete the cooking, giving them a turn over now and then. Select eight or nine large tomatoes, cut them through, remove the seeds, arrange them in a large saucepan with oil, dust them over with salt and fry first on one side and then on the other; sprinkle over a little finely-minced parsley, and put the pan over a moderate fire until the tomatoes are cooked. This must be done very gently. Then put them on a dish, and place the pieces of chicken on them. Put into a saucepan five tablespoonfuls of good gravy, boil for two minutes, pour over the meat through a conical strainer, and serve.
A wide-pan braise rather than a stew in the modern sense: the chicken cooks in oil and aromatics with almost no liquid, and the sauce arrives at the end. Two things carry it — staggered timing so the breast is not overcooked, and tomatoes softened slowly enough to hold their shape.
- The hinge: add the breast lateThe legs, wings and carcass go in first and cook to halfway; only then do the breast pieces join them. Skip that and the breast will be dry well before the thighs reach 175F. Pull the breast at 160-165F at the thickest point.
- "Cut into five pieces"Two legs, two wings and the body, with the breast fillets removed and set aside — six or seven pieces on a modern board. Use a 3 1/2 to 4 lb bird; the back and rib bones are wanted in the pan for flavour, not for serving.
- Flat stewpan, moderate fireA wide, shallow sauté pan or braiser, wide enough that the pieces sit in one layer and colour rather than steam. Moderate heat here means a steady sizzle, roughly medium on a domestic burner; figure 20-25 minutes before the breast goes in and 15-20 after.
- Oil and aromatics"A little oil" is two to three tablespoons — olive oil, given the Italian cast of the dish. Two or three small onions means peeled whole or halved, left in as they soften; the parsley goes in as a whole bunch, though the recipe does not say whether it is removed before serving.
- The tomatoesEight or nine large tomatoes is roughly 3 to 4 lb. The recipe says only "cut them through"; halved, seeded, salted and fried cut-side down in a separate pan over gentle heat — 15 to 20 minutes in all, turning once. Rushing them collapses the halves into sauce, which is not what is wanted underneath the chicken.
- "Five tablespoonfuls of good gravy"Not flour gravy but reduced brown stock or the sort of concentrated jus a professional kitchen kept on hand. The recipe simply boils it two minutes in its own saucepan; a modern substitute is a scant half cup of strong chicken or veal stock reduced hard and passed through a fine strainer — the "conical strainer" is a chinois.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper are specified only for the breast pieces; the tomatoes get salt alone. Season the dark meat as it goes into the pan, and taste the finished sauce; a reduced stock can turn salty fast.
- YieldOne bird plus three pounds of tomatoes serves four.
Oscar Tschirky's Cook Book (1896) collects several thousand recipes associated with the Waldorf's kitchens, which in the 1890s meant a largely French brigade. This one is Italian in construction — olive oil rather than butter, whole garlic, tomatoes fried in halves. The instruction to finish with a few spoonfuls of "good gravy" strained through a chinois points to a hotel kitchen rather than a domestic one: a professional kitchen would have had a reduced stock standing by to give a dish gloss and depth at the last moment. Note too that the tomatoes are cooked in a separate pan and the chicken laid on top, so the two elements stay distinct — a plating habit closer to restaurant service than to a family stew.