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Fried Chicken
Mrs. Bausher.
Cut the chicken in pieces, lay it in salt and water, which change several times; roll each piece in flour; fry in very hot lard or butter, season with salt and pepper; fry parsley with them also. Make a gravy of cream seasoned with salt, pepper and a little mace, thickened with a little flour in the pan in which the chickens were fried, pouring off the lard.
A plain Pennsylvania-German style fried chicken with a cream pan gravy. The method is sound; only the vagueness about quantities and heat needs filling in.
- The soaking"Lay it in salt and water, which change several times" is a brine-and-rinse meant to draw out blood from a freshly killed bird. With supermarket chicken, a single brine of about 1/4 cup salt to 4 cups water for an hour, then patted very dry, does everything this step was for. Dry surface matters more than the soak; wet chicken will not brown.
- Cut in piecesA 3 to 4 lb bird into ten: two drumsticks, two thighs, two wings, breasts halved crosswise. Even sizing is what makes a single pan of fat cook everything through at the same moment.
- "Very hot lard"Aim for 325-340F in the fat and hold it there. Lacking a thermometer, a cook would have had to go by how briskly the flour sizzled on contact. Lard is still the better choice here for flavour and smoke point; a neutral oil works, but butter alone will brown and burn before the thighs are done.
- Depth of fatThis is shallow frying, not deep frying. Half an inch in a heavy skillet, chicken turned once, roughly 12-15 minutes a side. Thigh and drumstick should read 175F, breast 165F.
- Frying the parsleyWhole sprigs, thoroughly dry, dropped into the hot fat for 15-30 seconds after the chicken comes out. Any water on the leaves will spit violently. They go crisp and dark green and are meant to be eaten, not used as a garnish to push aside.
- The gravyThe recipe says to pour off the lard; in practice leave about two tablespoons of fat with the browned flour and drippings. Two tablespoons flour cooked a minute, then about a cup of cream whisked in. Mace turns up often with cream sauces in nineteenth-century American cookbooks; a scant 1/4 teaspoon, ground, is enough to be noticed and not enough to dominate.
- Seasoning twiceThe recipe salts the chicken in the pan and salts the gravy again. Because the bird has already been through salt water, go light on the first and adjust the gravy at the end.
- YieldOne chicken serves four with the gravy over potatoes or biscuits.
The Home Cook Book belongs to the tradition of American charitable and community cookbooks, in which recipes were solicited from local women and printed under their names, as this one is under Mrs. Bausher's. That attribution is the whole point of the genre, though contributed recipes were frequently copied out of printed cookbooks rather than drawn from the contributor's own kitchen. The cream pan gravy, the mace, and the fried parsley are often associated with the Pennsylvania and mid-Atlantic tradition rather than the Southern one. Frying parsley in the fat left from a dish was a standard Anglo-American garnish through the whole nineteenth century, and period cookbooks often explain how to do it; it has largely dropped out of home cooking.