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Steamed Chicken
Rub the chicken on the inside with pepper and half tea-spoon of salt, place in steamer in a kettle that will keep it as near the water as possible, cover, and steam an hour and a half; when done keep hot while dressing is prepared, then cut them up, arrange on the platter, and serve with the dressing over them. The dressing is made as follows:. Boil one pint of gravy from the kettle without the fat, add cayenne pepper and half a tea-spoon salt; stir six table spoons of flour into a quarter pint of cream until smooth, and add to the gravy. Corn starch may be used instead of the flour, and some add nutmeg or celery salt.
A plain steamed bird with a cream velouté made from the steaming liquid. Two things need attention: the size of the chicken and the amount of flour in the sauce.
- Bird size and timingAn hour and a half of steaming suits a small bird of about 3 lb, or the pair of spring chickens the phrase "cut them up" implies. A modern 5-6 lb roaster will need closer to two hours. Judge by an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh: 165F, away from bone.
- Set the steamer lowThe recipe asks that the bird sit "as near the water as possible," presumably for a hotter, wetter steam. Either way the drippings fall into the kettle, so the water below becomes the stock for the sauce. Use a rack or colander an inch or two above the water and top up with boiling water as it evaporates.
- The "gravy from the kettle"This is the steaming water enriched by drippings, not a roasting-pan gravy. Skim the fat, then taste before you salt: a pint of it is often thin, and reducing it by a third or simmering it with a bay leaf and a few peppercorns pays off.
- Six tablespoons of flour is a lotSix tablespoons into a pint of stock, plus the quarter pint of cream, works out to well over two tablespoons per cup: a thick sauce by modern standards. For a pourable sauce use 3 to 4 tablespoons per pint; the original quantity will give something closer to a very heavy bechamel.
- Cornstarch is not a swap by volumeWhere the original offers cornstarch instead of flour, use roughly half as much by volume, whisk it into cold cream, and let it come only just to a simmer. Held at a boil it thins again and turns slick.
- Avoid a raw-flour tasteSlurried flour, unlike a cooked roux, needs a few minutes of gentle simmering after it goes into the hot stock. Stir constantly for three or four minutes off a hard boil, or the sauce carries a pasty edge that the cream will not hide.
- Quarter pint of creamHalf a cup. Heavy cream will not curdle in the hot stock; half-and-half or milk may break if you add it to liquid at a rolling boil, so lower the heat first.
- Seasoning and yieldNutmeg and celery salt are both period-typical and both work; add either at the end, off the heat, a pinch at a time. One 3 lb bird with this sauce serves four.
Steaming a fowl rather than roasting or boiling it was a frugal, practical technique in nineteenth-century American kitchens: nothing was lost to the pot the way it is with boiling, since the drippings collected below became the sauce. The Dixie Cook Book, a late-century Southern compilation in the mold of the big regional household manuals, is full of this kind of double-duty economy. The sauce itself is a plain white sauce in the tradition English and American cooks inherited by way of French practice, thickened with a cold slurry rather than a roux. The suggested finishing touches place it firmly in its period: nutmeg in a savory cream sauce was still ordinary, and celery salt was a seasoning cookbook writers were fond of recommending.