No. 2370

Chicken Tart or Pie a la Manhattan

Tarte de Poulet a la Manhattan

Have two young chickens, singe, draw and cut them up into six or eight pieces; lay them in a saucepan containing small blanched onions and a bunch of parsley garnished with bay leaf; moisten with stock (No. 194a), cook slowly and thicken with kneaded butter (No. 579). Fill the bottom of a deep pie dish (Fig. 183) with peeled and pressed halved tomatoes, cover with a layer of lightly parboiled fried bacon cut into three-quarters of an inch pieces; season with salt, mignonette and nutmeg, and range the chicken on top with potato balls five-eighths of an inch in diameter and boiled in salted water, also the small onions. Chop up four ounces of veal and three ounces of fat pork; season with salt, nutmeg and pepper; pound in the mortar and rub through a sieve; to this forcemeat add two tablespoonfuls of cooked fine herbs (No. 385), an ounce of bread-crumbs and one whole egg; roll this on a floured table into three-quarter inch balls and drop them here and there while putting the chicken in the dish. Moisten the edge of the dish, place on a small band made of puff paste parings half an inch wide and one-eighth of an inch thick; moisten this and cover with a flat of puff paste parings; pinch the edges together, cut away all the surplus from around the edge of the dish, egg over twice and bake in a moderate oven for half or three-quarters of an hour, then serve.

← No. 2369 Beef Tart or Pie a la Perez Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2371 Chicken Tart or Pie a la Rigolo →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's-era chicken pie: stewed chicken, forcemeat balls, bacon and tomato under a puff paste lid. The cross-referenced numbers assume you own the whole book, so here is what they stand for.

The cross-referencesThe cross-references — No. 194a is Ranhofer's stock; any good unsalted chicken stock works. No. 579 is kneaded butter, i.e. beurre manié — soft butter and flour worked to a paste and whisked into the simmering liquid. No. 385 is cooked fine herbs, which in Ranhofer generally means shallot, mushroom and parsley sweated in butter.
MignonetteMignonette is coarsely cracked white peppercorns, not a separate spice. Crush whole white pepper under a pan rather than using fine ground, which disappears into the filling.
Two young chickensTwo young chickens — probably birds of roughly 2 to 2.5 lb each. Two modern 3 to 3.5 lb chickens will overfill a single dish; one large chicken cut into eight, plus a couple of extra thighs, fits a standard deep pie dish and serves six.
Do not cook the chicken throughThe stew stage plus 30 to 45 minutes under pastry is a great deal of heat. Take the chicken off the stock while it is just short of done, about 20 minutes at a bare simmer, and let the oven finish it. Breast pieces especially will be dry otherwise.
The forcemeat ballsFour ounces veal and three ounces fat pork pounded and sieved is a food processor job now: pulse the cold meats to a paste, then add the herbs, crumbs and egg. Chill the mixture before rolling or the three-quarter-inch balls will not hold shape.
Puff paste paringsPuff paste parings — a professional kitchen would usually have trimmings from other work. Use ordinary all-butter puff pastry rolled to about 1/8 inch, and do not skip the half-inch band cemented around the moistened rim — it gives the lid something to grip so it does not slide off as the filling settles.
Egg over twiceTwo coats of egg wash, the second after the first has dried, is what produces the deep lacquered top. Cut a vent; the filling is wet and the steam has to leave.
Oven temperatureOven temperature — a moderate oven is conventionally read as about 350°F. If the pastry is browning before 30 minutes are up, drop to 325°F rather than tenting, which softens the crust.
YieldAs written the dish serves six to eight as a main course.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he wrote after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The book runs to thousands of numbered preparations, cross-referenced like an encyclopaedia, and its raised and covered pies form a long sequence — this one sits between a beef pie à la Perez and another chicken pie à la Rigolo.