No. 1905

Chickens, Vienna Style—Sauted

Poulets Sautes a la Viennoise

Select chickens that weigh from a pound to a pound and a quarter; bleed them just when ready to use, and pluck them quickly, then cut them up into four pieces, performing all this operation most speedily so that the chickens have no time to become cold; season over with a mixture of salt, pepper, thyme, powdered bay leaf, and lemon juice, then dip in flour, afterward in beaten eggs, and bread-crumb them only once. Cook in a sauteing pan with clarified butter over a very hot fire, drain, sponge, and season; dress them dry with a bunch of fried parsley on the top.

← No. 1904 Chickens, Parisian Style—Sauted Chicken No. 1906 Sauted Chickens with half—Glaze →

For the Modern Kitchen

A shallow-fried breaded chicken in the Viennese manner — essentially schnitzel logic applied to a whole small bird. The recipe assumes a bird killed minutes before cooking; everything else scales down easily.

The birdA chicken of one to one and a quarter pounds is a poussin or spring chicken, not a modern broiler. Poussin (about 1 lb) or a Cornish game hen (1–1.5 lb) is the right substitute; one bird serves one person, or two if generously garnished.
Skip the slaughteringThe instruction to bleed and pluck at the moment of cooking is a professional kitchen's way of guaranteeing freshness in 1894, before reliable cold chain. It has no bearing on the finished dish today. Buy the bird chilled and dry it thoroughly; wet skin will not hold the coating.
Cut up into four piecesTwo legs and two breast halves with the wing attached. Remove the backbone and keep the pieces even in thickness so they finish together — flatten the breast slightly with the heel of your hand.
The seasoning mixtureSalt, pepper, thyme, powdered bay and lemon juice, rubbed on before flouring. Use a scant teaspoon of salt per bird, a pinch each of the dried herbs, and the juice of half a lemon; let it sit ten minutes, then blot before flouring or the flour will go pasty.
Bread-crumb only onceThis is the hinge. A single light coat of fine dry crumbs gives a thin crisp shell that stays attached; doubling the crumbs on small joints produces a thick jacket that separates from the meat as it cooks.
Clarified butter and a very hot fireClarified butter is essential here — whole butter's milk solids burn well before the chicken is cooked. The book calls for "a very hot fire" but gives no temperature; in practice the fat should be hot enough to set the crust at once without scorching the crumbs before the meat is done. Reckon on roughly 12–15 minutes for legs and 10–12 for breast pieces, and cook until the thickest part reads 165F.
"Drain, sponge, and season"Lift onto paper, blot the surface, then salt immediately while the coating is hot so it adheres. "Dress them dry" means no sauce and no pooled butter on the plate; the only garnish the recipe names is the fried parsley.
Fried parsleyCurly parsley, absolutely dry, dropped into the hot fat for 15–20 seconds until stiff and bright. Wet parsley will spatter violently; shake it in a towel first and stand back as it goes in.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years at Delmonico's in New York, and its chicken chapter runs to dozens of variations distinguished only by garnish and sauce — Parisian, Viennese, with half-glaze, and so on down the numbered list. "À la Viennoise" in nineteenth-century French kitchen usage generally signals the Vienna treatment of flouring, egging and crumbing, then frying in butter; applied to a jointed spring chicken it produces what later American cooks would recognize as breaded fried chicken, though cooked in clarified butter rather than lard or shortening. The insistence on killing and plucking the bird at the last moment reflects a period when hotel kitchens kept live poultry on the premises — a standard of freshness that was as much about the absence of refrigeration as about flavor.