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Fried Chicken
(Pollo fritto) Wash a spring chicken and keep in boiling water for one minute. Cut into pieces at the joints, roll them in flour, season with salt and pepper and dip in two whole beaten eggs. After leaving the pieces of chicken for half an hour, roll them in bread crumbs, repeating the operation twice if necessary. Put into a saucepan with boiling oil or fat, seeing that the pieces of chicken are well browned on both sides. Keep the fire low. Serve hot with lemon.
A straightforward Italian fried chicken, breaded twice and fried gently rather than hard. The original assumes a very small bird and gives no temperatures, so the two things worth pinning down are the size of the chicken and the heat of the fat.
- Spring chickenA spring chicken in this period is a young bird of roughly 1.5 to 2.5 lb, not a modern 4-5 lb roaster. Use a small whole chicken cut into eight or ten pieces, or use thighs, drumsticks and halved breasts; large supermarket pieces will brown long before the meat is done.
- The one-minute scaldA minute in boiling water firms the skin; it does not cook the bird through. Dry the chicken thoroughly afterwards or the flour will slide off.
- Cutting at the jointsJointing rather than chopping means the knife goes through cartilage rather than bone, which avoids bone fragments in the coating.
- The half-hour restThe floured and egged pieces stand for thirty minutes before crumbing, which helps the coating settle and cling. Refrigerate during the rest rather than leaving raw chicken at room temperature.
- Double breading"Repeating the operation twice if necessary" appears to mean going back through egg and crumbs again. Do it for thick pieces; a single coat is enough for wings and small drumsticks.
- Frying fat and heat"Keep the fire low" is the hinge. Aim for about 300-325F in a good depth of oil, roughly half an inch or more. Hotter fat sets a dark crust in five minutes while the meat at the bone is still raw; at this lower temperature the pieces need 12-18 minutes with a turn halfway.
- DonenessThe original relies on colour alone. Check the thickest piece at the bone with a thermometer and look for 165F.
- ServingThe lemon is more than decoration; the acid cuts the fried coating. A small bird of this kind serves two, perhaps three as part of a larger meal.
This is pollo fritto, the fried chicken associated with Tuscany and Rome, where it often appears alongside fried artichokes, courgette flowers and lamb chops as part of a fritto misto. The lemon at the end is the marker: where American fried chicken of the same era tends to lean on gravy or cream, the Italian version cuts the fat with acid at the table. The instruction to keep the fire low suits a coal or wood range, where the cook controlled heat by moving the pan rather than turning a dial.