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Chicken Saute, Creole
Remove the head and legs of a tender two-and-a-half-pound chicken; then cut into twelve even pieces. Heat in a sautoire two tablespoons olive oil, add the chicken; season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper and gently cook for fifteen minutes, or until a nice golden colour, frequently tossing the chicken meanwhile.
Slice rather finely two medium, sound, white onions, two sound green peppers, and twelve very small, round, fresh mushrooms, peeled and thoroughly cleaned, and add all to the chicken. Mix well with a fork and cook on a steady fire for ten minutes, lightly mixing meanwhile. Then moisten with a gill broth, add four medium, sound, ripe, peeled and seeded tomatoes cut into small pieces; mix well, add one clove finely chopped garlic, one teaspoon chopped parsley and lightly mix. Cover the pan and let cook for fifteen minutes more. Dress on a hot dish and serve.
A straightforward brown-and-braise chicken saute; the only real obstacles are the vessel, one archaic measure, and the assumption that you are butchering the bird yourself.
- SautoireA sautoire is a wide, straight-sided saute pan, deeper than a frying pan and shallower than a stockpot. A 12-inch skillet or a shallow braiser with a lid does the job.
- A gill of brothHalf a cup, or 4 fl oz. That is a deliberately small amount — the tomatoes and onions release plenty more liquid, and the dish is meant to finish as a saute in a thick sauce, not a stew.
- Cutting the birdThe recipe says only 'twelve even pieces'. One way to get there is the standard eight (two drumsticks, two thighs, two wings, two breast halves) with the breasts halved again and the back cut across. Modern supermarket birds tend to run larger, around 3.5-4 lb; buy a small one or use 2.5 lb of mixed bone-in thighs and drumsticks and accept slightly longer cooking.
- Head and legsAn instruction for cooks receiving a whole bird from a poulterer. Skip it.
- Total heat and timingFifteen minutes browning, ten with the vegetables, fifteen covered — forty minutes in all, which is right for a small bird in pieces. Check that the thigh joint reads 175F and the breast pieces are firm; if you have substituted a larger bird, add ten to fifteen minutes to the covered stage.
- Peeling the tomatoesScore the skins and drop them in boiling water for thirty seconds. Out of season, a 14 oz tin of chopped tomatoes, drained of most of its juice, is closer to four ripe ones than a supermarket winter tomato is.
- Peeled mushroomsPeriod practice, and unnecessary with clean cultivated button mushrooms. Wipe them and leave them whole so they keep their shape through the braise.
- Seasoning orderThe garlic and parsley go in late, with the tomatoes, rather than at the browning stage, so the garlic is not toasted.
- YieldThree to four, with rice or bread to take up the sauce.
"Creole" in a 1910s cookbook is often shorthand for onion, green pepper and tomato with garlic, a flavour base that New Orleans kitchens had built from French, Spanish and Caribbean practice. What is telling here is the framing: this is French professional technique -- a sautoire, a bird cut into twelve, a moistening of broth -- with a Louisiana seasoning applied to it, which is how hotel and restaurant kitchens of the period tended to absorb regional American cooking into a classical repertoire. Filippini's International Cook Book (1911) gathers hundreds of such dishes under national and regional labels, and its "Creole" entries typically mean tomato and pepper rather than any documented Louisiana household recipe.