No. 1868

Chicken Fricassee with Curry

Fricassee de Poulet au Kari

Divide two small chickens of a pound and a half each after cleaning well into four distinct parts; pare them well. Put two or three spoonfuls of chopped onions in a saucepan and fry with butter till of a fine color; add the pieces of chicken, toss them for two minutes and season, sprinkling two dessertspoonfuls of powdered curry over. Moisten to their height with stock (No. 194a), put in a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf. Peel and chop up a small sour apple, add it to the chicken and let cook over a slow fire, taking out the fillets as soon as they are done; then remove the legs and place them in another saucepan with the fillets. Strain the sauce and reduce it with a few spoonfuls of good raw cream and as much mushroom broth; take it off the fire, thicken with three egg-yolks diluted with cream and a piece of butter divided into small pats. Dress the chickens, cover over with the sauce and serve a vegetable dishful of Indian rice.

← No. 1867 Chicken Fricassee with Crustacean Sauce Chicken No. 1869 Chicken, Marinade Sauce—Fried →

For the Modern Kitchen

A late nineteenth-century French kitchen's reading of curry: a white fricassee finished with an egg-yolk liaison, with curry powder and apple standing in for the spice of the original. The whole dish hangs on the last step, so read it first.

The hinge: the liaisonOnce the three yolks and cream go in, the sauce must not return to a simmer or it will scramble. Take the pan off the heat, temper the yolks with a ladle of the hot reduced sauce, stir them back in, then whisk in the butter a pat at a time over the barest warmth.
Chicken sizeTwo birds of a pound and a half each are smaller than anything at a modern supermarket. Two Cornish game hens are the closest match; otherwise use one 3 to 3 1/2 lb chicken cut into eight, and expect the breast to cook faster than the legs, which is precisely why Ranhofer tells you to lift the fillets out first.
"Four distinct parts"Most likely two legs (thigh and drumstick together) and two breast halves per bird, since the recipe later refers only to fillets and legs; "pare them well" presumably covers trimming wing tips and back. The carcasses are worth simmering into the stock rather than discarding.
Spoon measuresA dessertspoonful is 2 teaspoons, so the curry is about 4 teaspoons total. "Two or three spoonfuls of chopped onions" means tablespoons here, about half a small onion. Toast the curry powder in the butter for a few seconds before the liquid goes in to take the raw edge off it.
Stock No. 194aRanhofer's cross-reference to one of his basic stocks. A good unsalted chicken stock does the job; avoid anything dark or heavily roasted, since this is meant to stay pale.
"Moisten to their height"Add stock until it just comes level with the top of the chicken, no more. Too much liquid and the reduction stage takes long enough to overcook the meat.
Mushroom brothThe strained liquor from poaching or cooking mushrooms, kept as a kitchen staple in a professional larder. A few spoonfuls of dried-mushroom soaking liquid, strained, or the liquid from simmering a handful of button mushrooms in water, gives the same faintly savoury lift.
TimingThe recipe gives no times. On a slow fire expect the fillets to be done well before the legs; check each and hold both in a warm covered pan while the sauce reduces.
Indian rice and yield"Indian rice" here is plain boiled rice served separately, not a spiced pilaf. The recipe gives no yield; two small birds will serve about four to six.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows exactly how curry entered the classical French repertoire: not as an Indian dish but as a flavouring folded into an existing French form. The bones of No. 1868 are a straightforward fricass\nearly white cooking — the meat itself is not browned, though the onions are taken to a fine colour — with a sauce bound at the end with egg yolks and cream, plus curry powder and a chopped sour apple. The apple is the tell. Commercial curry powders of the period were coarse and often harsh, and cooks are often said to have softened them with fruit, coconut or chutney; the apple's acidity and sweetness do that work here, and the technique survives in the apple-and-curry sauces of British and French cooking well into the twentieth century. Ranhofer's cross-references to numbered stocks throughout the book are a reminder that this was written for a brigade with a stockpot always going, not for a household cook.