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Chicken and Noodle Stew
1 good-sized chicken or fowl 1/2 tablespoon Karo, Blue Label 1 medium sized onion, minced 1/3 cup Mazola Boiling water Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1/2 pound noodles Salt and pepper to taste 1 cup coarse bread crumbs fried crisp in a little Mazola Clean and disjoint the chicken as for fricassee. Pour the Mazola in a kettle, add the Karo and onion and slightly brown the chicken in this. Pour in boiling water to almost coverabout two and a half quarts. Add one-half tablespoon salt and simmer, closely covered, until tender. (This may be done in the oven if more convenient.) Remove the chicken, add any necessary seasoning to the broth and thicken it with one tablespoon cornstarch blended with a little cold water to each cup and a half of stock. Then add the noodles and boil until tender, about fifteen to twenty minutes. Arrange the chicken on slices of toast, put the noodles in their sauce around the edge of the platter and sprinkle with the bread crumbs browned in the Mazola.
A brand booklet recipe from the Corn Products Refining Company, so every ingredient line is a trade name. Translating those, and cutting the noodle time roughly in half, is most of the work.
- The brand namesMazola is corn oil, then a novelty as a cooking fat; any neutral oil works. Argo and Kingsford's are cornstarch. Karo Blue Label was the light grade of corn syrup (the near-colourless grade was sold as Crystal White); half a tablespoon is there only to help the chicken and onion take colour, and it will not sweeten the dish.
- Chicken or fowl is not the same choiceA "fowl" meant a mature laying hen, which needs two to three hours of simmering to become tender. A supermarket 4-5 lb chicken will be done in about an hour to an hour and a quarter. Test the thigh joint rather than the clock.
- Cut the noodle timeFifteen to twenty minutes suited the thick, heavy home-rolled or bulk egg noodles of the period. Modern dried egg noodles are tender in 8-10 minutes and will collapse if held longer. Add them only when you are ready to plate.
- Thicken with careOne tablespoon cornstarch per cup and a half of stock gives a moderately thick, gravy-like sauce, and cooking noodles directly in it means constant stirring or a scorched bottom. Either use a wide pan over gentle heat or cook the noodles separately and combine.
- If you use the ovenThe book offers oven-cooking as an alternative but names no temperature; a tightly covered pot in a moderate oven, around 325F, will do, checked for tenderness on the same schedule as the stovetop version.
- LiquidTwo and a half quarts of boiling water is a generous amount for one bird; you will have more broth than sauce, which is worth keeping for soup rather than thickening all of it.
- YieldEnough for six, or four with substantial leftovers. Toast the bread slices just before serving so they do not go soft under the chicken.
This comes from one of the recipe booklets issued by the Corn Products Refining Company in the early twentieth century to promote Karo syrup, Mazola oil, and Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch, which is why a plain chicken stew names three proprietary products, under four brand names, in nine ingredient lines. Corn oil was still an unfamiliar cooking fat to American households used to butter, lard and suet, and booklets like this one worked to show it doing everything those fats did. The dish itself is older and plainer than its branding: a fricassee-style bird simmered until tender with noodles cooked in the thickened broth, a pattern strongly associated with German-American kitchens in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, where broad egg noodles were a household staple.