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Chicken Saute, Paysanne
Singe, cut off head and feet from a tender three-pound chicken, draw and cut in twelve even pieces. Heat two tablespoons lard in a frying pan, add the chicken with the liver and heart, season with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper, gently brown fifteen minutes, turning the pieces once in a while. Add two ounces lean bacon cut in quarter-inch squares, and two finely chopped onions; stir well and let brown ten minutes more. Sprinkle with one tablespoon flour, add one chopped bean of garlic, a half teaspoon finely chopped parsley and shuffle pan one minute. Moisten with a pint broth and a tablespoon vinegar, mix well and let cook thirty minutes. Transfer chicken to a hot dish and serve.
A straightforward French braise-in-the-pan that assumes you are starting with an undressed bird. Everything else translates cleanly to a modern skillet.
- Start with a cut-up chickenSingeing, drawing and removing head and feet are all done for you now. Buy a 3-lb chicken and cut it into 12 pieces: 2 wings, 2 drumsticks, 2 thighs, each breast half in three, plus the back if you want it in the pan.
- "Bean of garlic"An over-literal rendering of the French gousse d'ail (a gousse is a pod or husk): one clove, not a head.
- Liver and heartFifteen minutes of browning plus 40 more of cooking will turn the liver to grit. Brown it briefly with the rest, lift it out, and return it at the end if you want it in the dish.
- FatTwo tablespoons lard is right for flavour and browns well; butter alone will scorch over the 25 minutes of browning called for. Bacon fat or a neutral oil works if lard is not to hand.
- A pint of brothTwo cups. Add it warm so the browning is not lost, scraping the flour and fond off the pan bottom as you go.
- The vinegarOne tablespoon in two cups of broth is a seasoning, not a marinade — it sharpens the onion and bacon. Red wine vinegar or cider vinegar suits it better than distilled white.
- DonenessTotal time in the pan runs close to 55 minutes, which is generous for a 3-lb bird. Check the thighs at 30 minutes of simmering; 165F at the joint is done, and the breast pieces may be ready sooner than the legs.
- Finishing and yieldThe recipe says only "transfer chicken" — the pan liquid is the point of the dish, so skim the fat and reduce it briefly, then pour it over. Serves four.
Paysanne means peasant-style, a term more usually associated with a garnish of vegetables — carrot, turnip, onion, potato, bacon — cut in small squares. The dish belongs to the family of poulet sauté preparations that fill the chicken chapters of turn-of-the-century professional cookbooks, where a single browning method is varied by a handful of garnish names — chasseur, bonne femme, marengo, paysanne — each understood as shorthand by anyone trained in a French kitchen. The ambition of the big American compendia of the period was to give middle-class households access to the restaurant repertoire; the assumption that the cook will singe and draw her own three-pound bird is a reminder that poultry then arrived closer to the farm than the counter.