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Chicken Pot-Pie
Cut up a chicken and put on in hot water enough to cover, and take care that it does not cook dry; while boiling cut off a slice from bread dough, add a small lump of lard, and mix up like light biscuit, roll, cut out with cake-cutter and set by stove to rise; wash and pare potatoes of moderate size, and add them when chicken is almost done; when potatoes begin to boil, season with salt and pepper, add dumplings and season again. See that there is water enough to keep from burning, cover very tightly, and do not take cover off until dumplings are done. They will cook in half an hour, and may be tested by lifting one edge of the lid, taking out a dumpling and breaking it open. Or, the dumplings may be placed in steamer over cold water, taking care to leave some of the holes in steamer open, as if all are covered by the dumplings, the steam will not be admitted, and they will not cook well. If there are too many dumplings to lie on bottom without covering all holes, attach them to the side and upper edge of steamer by wetting dough and pressing it to the edge. When done remove to vegetable dish and pour hot gravy over them. Dish potatoes by themselves, and chickens and dumplings together. Make gravy by mixing two level table-spoons flour and a little butter together, and stir into the broth remaining in pot slowly, add more boiling water if needed and season with salt and pepper. Or, make dumplings with one pint sour milk, two well-beaten eggs, half tea-spoon soda (mixed in part of the flour), and flour enough to make as stiff as can be stirred with a spoon; or baking-powder and sweet milk may be used. Drop in by spoonfuls, cover tightly, and boil as above. A pot-pie may be made from a good boiling piece of beef; if too much grease arises skim off.
A stewed chicken with steamed dumplings rather than a pastry-crust pie. Most of the recipe still works as written; the parts that need translating are the dough and the lid.
- The hinge: keep the lid onThe dumplings cook largely in trapped steam above the broth rather than fully submerged, and the recipe is emphatic that the pot stays covered until they are done. Every peek drops the steam. The recipe allows one test at the end: lift one edge of the lid, take out a dumpling and break it open.
- "A slice from bread dough"This assumes a batch of yeast bread dough already rising, which the recipe takes for granted. A piece of risen dough with a tablespoon or two of lard worked in, cut into rounds and left to rise until puffy, does the same job. Store-bought pizza dough will substitute if you enrich it with the fat.
- The sour-milk alternativeA pint of true soured raw milk is not modern buttermilk, but cultured buttermilk is the practical stand-in. Half a teaspoon of soda to a pint is on the low side; the batter should be stiff enough to hold its shape on the spoon, and it should go into the pot promptly, since the leavening starts working the moment the acid meets the soda.
- "Light biscuit" and "cake-cutter"Light biscuit means yeast-raised biscuit, not baking-powder biscuit. A cake-cutter here is simply a round cutter, about 2 to 2 1/2 inches.
- The birdA stewing hen or fowl was assumed, which wants 1 1/2 to 2 hours to become tender. A modern 4-5 lb supermarket chicken is much younger and will be done in 45 to 60 minutes, so judge "almost done" by the meat pulling from the bone rather than by the clock.
- Potatoes"Moderate size" means whole potatoes the size of a small fist. By the recipe's own sequence they go in before the dumplings, come to a boil, and then cook the further half hour the dumplings need -- so allow at least thirty-five minutes. Halve larger ones so they finish with the chicken rather than collapsing into the broth.
- The gravyTwo level tablespoons of flour with a little butter is a light thickening for a potful of broth. The recipe stirs the raw flour-and-butter paste straight in; add it to the broth gradually and let it cook a few minutes so it does not taste raw.
- YieldOne chicken with dumplings and potatoes serves four to six. The dumplings do not keep well; they turn heavy on standing and worse on reheating.
Pot-pie in nineteenth-century American usage often meant nothing baked at all: a piece of meat stewed in a covered pot with dough laid over the top or dropped in as dumplings, the pot itself supplying the crust's function. This is the plainer, older sense of the word, and it is often said to have lasted longest in country kitchens where a stew hung over the fire all afternoon and the bread dough for the week was already at hand. That detail is what dates the recipe most clearly. It presumes a household baking its own bread on a regular cycle, so the dumpling costs nothing but a pinch of lard and a corner of dough. The alternate versions appended at the end, sour milk and soda, then baking powder and sweet milk, offer the cook other ways to the same result, and the recipe closes with a note that beef will do as well as chicken.