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Fricasseed Chicken
Cut up and put on to boil, skin side down, in a small quantity of water, season with salt, pepper, and slices of an onion if liked; stew gently until tender, remove chicken, add a half pint cream or milk to gravy, and thicken with butter and flour rubbed smoothly together (adding a little of the gravy to soften and help mix them), let boil two or three minutes, add a little chopped parsley and serve. Or, first fry the chicken brown in a little hot lard, take out chicken, add a table-spoon flour, and let cook a minute, stirring constantly; add a pint water (or stock if at hand), a little vinegar or Worcestershire sauce, season with salt and pepper; when it has boiled, remove from fire, strain, add the beaten yolk of an egg, pour over the chicken and serve. Or, put chicken in sauce-pan with barely enough water to cover, stew gently until tender; have a frying-pan prepared with a few slices of salt pork, drain chicken and fry with pork until it is a fine, rich brown; take chicken and bits of pork from the pan, pour in the broth, thicken with brown flour, mixed smooth with a little water, and season with pepper; now put chicken and pork back into gravy, let simmer a few minutes, and serve very hot.-Mrs. J. H. S.
Three fricassees in one entry: a white one finished with cream, a brown one thickened with a yolk, and a country version browned with salt pork. All three depend on a gentle simmer rather than a boil, which is the whole difference between tender chicken and stringy chicken.
- Keep it at a bare simmer"Stew gently" is the hinge. Water that rolls will tighten the breast meat and leave it dry while the legs are still tough. Hold the pot at 180-190F, with the surface barely moving, and count on 45 minutes to an hour for a cut-up 3-4 lb bird.
- Half a pint of creamAn American half pint is one cup. Whole milk works but will taste thin against the flour; heavy cream is closer to what a farmhouse kitchen would have skimmed.
- Butter and flour rubbed togetherThis is a beurre manié, not a cooked roux — roughly equal parts butter and flour worked to a paste, then loosened with a spoonful of hot gravy before it goes in, exactly as the recipe directs. Two to three minutes of boiling is enough to lose the raw flour taste.
- Lard and salt porkLard fries at a higher smoke point than butter and gives the brown version its character; any neutral oil or bacon fat substitutes. Salt pork is sold beside the bacon in many markets, or use thick unsmoked bacon and cut back on added salt.
- The egg yolkRemoving the pan from the heat before adding the beaten yolk is deliberate. Whisk a ladle of the hot strained gravy into the yolk first, then return it — direct contact with a boiling sauce will scramble it. The finished sauce should not be reheated above a simmer.
- Brown flourFlour toasted dry in a pan or a slow oven until it is the colour of sand. It thickens less than raw flour, so allow roughly half again as much, and it is what gives the third version its deeper colour and nutty flavour.
- Quantity of liquid"A small quantity of water" and "barely enough to cover" both aim at concentrated broth rather than soup. Start with about a cup for the first method; the chicken releases a good deal of its own liquid.
- YieldOne chicken cut up serves four, with rice, biscuits or mashed potato to take the gravy.
Fricassee is a French borrowing current in English cookbooks since the sixteenth century; it describes a middle path between stewing and sautéing, in which meat is cut up, cooked in a little liquid, and served in a sauce made from that liquid. The Dixie Cook Book appeared in the 1880s, by which time the dish had long been thoroughly domesticated in American kitchens, and fricasseeing was one common way to use a bird past its laying prime — old enough to want an hour of gentle stewing, and rich enough in collagen to repay it. The three variations here are signed only with the initials "Mrs. J. H. S.": a white cream version, a brown egg-thickened one, and one built on a few slices of salt pork.