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Chicken Saute, Lanier
Neatly clean and wipe two spring chickens of one and a quarter or a half pounds, and cut them into four pieces each. Heat an ounce melted butter in a saute pan and lay pieces in, skin side downward. Add six sound, medium-sized, peeled and cleaned, fresh whole mushrooms, season with light teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper and three saltspoons Oriental curry powder, if at hand, tightly cover pan and gently cook on a moderate fire for ten minutes or until a nice golden colour, then turn pieces of chicken as well as mushrooms on the other side and let gently cook for five minutes. Add now two medium-sized peeled and finely chopped shallots, half a medium-sized, finely chopped green pepper, and mix the whole well together with a wooden spoon while cooking for two minutes. Pour in a half gill good sherry wine and a few drops of cognac, shuffle contents of pan for two minutes, pour in a half pint cream (not very thick), cover and let cook again for ten minutes, slightly shuffling meanwhile. Dilute two egg yolks with two tablespoons cream, an ounce good butter, and gradually add to chicken, being careful to briskly shuffle contents of pan meanwhile, but do not allow to boil again. Dress chicken on a hot serving or chafing dish and send to table with six freshly prepared Graham-bread toasts separately.
POCAHONTAS "EGG BREAD" Take two thoroughly beaten eggs, three cups white cornmeal, one and a half pints milk and a pint water, mix well together. Boil half a cup Carolina rice for ten minutes, thoroughly drain, add to other preparation, with a piece butter or lard the size of an egg, a teaspoon each sugar and salt and one and a half teaspoons of yeast in powder. Mix well, transfer into an earthen baking dish, bake in a moderate oven for forty-five minutes or until a nice brown on top, remove and serve in the same dish.
The above is an excellent breakfast dish and highly appreciated by Southern people.
A chafing-dish sauté finished with an egg-yolk liaison, followed by a batter bread of the spoonbread family. Both are workable as written; the measurements are the main obstacle.
- The hinge: no boiling after the yolksOnce the two yolks slaked with cream and butter go in, the sauce must stay below a simmer or it will scramble into curds. Pull the pan half off the heat and keep it moving until the sauce coats a spoon.
- "Shuffle"Period shorthand for shaking the pan by the handle to move the contents without stirring. It keeps the chicken skin intact and the sauce emulsified.
- Archaic measuresA gill is half a cup, so a half gill of sherry is 1/4 cup. A half pint of cream is one cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon: two saltspoons white pepper is 1/2 tsp, three of curry powder is 3/4 tsp.
- Spring chickensTwo birds of 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb each are smaller than most birds sold today. Two Cornish hens work, or one 3 lb chicken cut into eight; a larger bird may need roughly ten minutes more in the covered stage before the sherry goes in.
- Curry powderFilippini's "Oriental curry powder" was most likely a mild, turmeric-forward commercial blend of the sort then sold, and the recipe treats it as optional ("if at hand"). Three-quarters of a teaspoon is meant to tint and perfume the cream rather than read as curry, so use a gentle blend rather than a hot madras.
- Yield and servingEight pieces of chicken and six toasts suggest four to six servings. Graham bread is a wholemeal bread, so wholewheat toast stands in; it is cut and sent separately so it stays crisp under the sauce.
- Egg bread: "yeast in powder"Most probably chemical leavening rather than baker's yeast: baking powder was commonly sold under names like "yeast powder," and the batter goes straight into the oven with no rising time. Use 1 1/2 tsp baking powder; a modern packet of dried yeast would have little chance to work here.
- Egg bread: the batter is meant to be looseThree cups of cornmeal to five cups of liquid gives a pourable batter that sets to a spoonable, custard-edged bread rather than a sliceable cornbread. Bake at 350F in a buttered earthenware or ceramic dish and serve with a spoon.
- Carolina riceA historic long-grain Southern rice. Any long-grain white rice, boiled ten minutes and drained hard, gives the same effect: soft grains suspended through the meal.
The International Cook Book (1906) was compiled by Alessandro Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it carries dishes named after patrons, places and public figures in the fashion of the grand restaurant menus of the day. The Lanier name is a well-known one in Virginia and Georgia, and the pairing on the page with a Pocahontas egg bread gives both a Southern colouring, though the specific dedication is not documented. The saute itself is French restaurant technique in miniature: a covered pan, a wine deglazing, cream, and a yolk-and-butter liaison at the end, exactly the kind of dish suited to a chafing dish at the table, which was a fashionable form of home entertaining around 1900. The egg bread is the older and more local thing, a member of the spoonbread family in which cornmeal is slackened with milk and water until it bakes into something closer to a savoury pudding than a bread, and the addition of boiled rice points toward the Lowcountry, where rice was worked into cornmeal batters.