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Chicken Negus
Singe a tender three-pound chicken, draw, then cut in twelve even pieces. Season all over with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, gently turn in flour, dip in beaten egg and lightly roll in bread crumbs. Heat two tablespoons melted butter in a sautoire, arrange in the chicken and gently brown eight minutes on each side, then set in oven ten minutes. Remove and keep hot.
Slice in rings three medium white onions, turn well in flour and place in a frying basket, then fry five minutes. Lift up, shake well in the basket, sprinkle over a half teaspoon salt, dress on a large dish. Arrange chicken on top of onions. Prepare and place tomatoes on crusts around the chicken and send to table with a Bearnaise sauce separately.
A Delmonico-style sauté of breaded chicken on a bed of fried onion rings, with grilled tomatoes and Béarnaise passed separately. The original assumes a professional range and a cook who already knows the omitted temperatures.
- Buy the bird jointed"Singe... draw" means burning off pinfeathers and removing the innards, neither of which applies to a supermarket chicken. Buy a 3 lb bird cut into pieces, or cut it into eight to twelve joints yourself; twelve pieces means halving the breasts and separating drumsticks from thighs.
- SautoireA straight-sided shallow sauté pan, heavier than a frying pan. Any wide, heavy skillet that holds all twelve pieces in one layer without crowding works.
- Cut the browning timeEight minutes a side in butter will blacken egg-and-crumb coating before the meat is near done. Four to five minutes a side over medium heat gives the same colour; clarified butter or butter with a spoon of oil scorches less.
- Oven heat, unstatedSet the pan in a 375°F oven to finish. Ten minutes suits thin pieces; go by an instant-read thermometer showing 165°F at the thickest part of the thigh, which may take longer than the ten minutes given.
- The frying basketThis is deep fat, and no temperature is given. Use 350-375°F; hotter and the flour coating darkens before the onion softens. Separate the slices into rings, dry them, then flour, and shake off the surplus in a sieve or the fat will foam and cloud.
- Tomatoes on crustsThe recipe says only "prepare and place tomatoes on crusts"; the usual reading is halved tomatoes, seasoned and grilled or broiled, each set on a round of bread fried in butter.
- Béarnaise separatelyBéarnaise separately -- Warm, not hot, and made close to serving. Direct or excessive heat will split it, so keep it in a bowl over barely warm water.
- YieldA 3 lb chicken with onions and tomatoes serves four.
The recipe comes from Alessandro Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, whose books carried the restaurant's late nineteenth-century repertoire into American home kitchens. The name is decorative rather than descriptive: dishes in this style were routinely tagged with a place, a patron or a public figure — though Filippini explains nothing. What is genuinely of the period is the construction: a plain breaded sauté raised to a restaurant dish by a bed of deep-fried onions, a ring of tomato croûtes, and a sauceboat of Béarnaise sent round on the side, three separate cooking operations timed to meet at the pass.