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Chicken Maryland
2 medium sized frying or broil ing chickens 3 tablespoons Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1½ teaspoons salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1/2 cup Mazola Potato or rice croquettes Currant jelly 1 pint white sauce Clean and disjoint the chickens as for fricassee, then dust with salt, pepper and cornstarch. Heat the Mazola in a frying pan and quickly brown the chicken in it. Reduce the heat, cover closely and cook gently or steam for thirty minutes. For serv ing, arrange in the middle of a platter with croquettes around the edge. Garnish with cress, parsley or celery tips and pass white sauce. This may be made from the drippings in the pan by adding to them two tablespoons cornstarch, one-half teaspoon salt, few grains pepper and a pint of rich milk.
A brand-book version of a dish that is usually flour-dredged and cream-gravied; here cornstarch does both jobs. Two things need attention: the size of the birds and the fact that the white sauce is really a pan gravy.
- MazolaMazola is corn oil, one of the two products this book exists to sell. Half a cup in a wide skillet is a shallow-fry depth, not deep frying; any neutral oil with a high smoke point works the same way.
- Frying or broiling chickensThese were young birds, broilers running roughly 1 to 2.5 lb and fryers roughly 2 to 3.5 lb, which likely explains why the recipe calls for two. One modern 3.5 to 4 lb chicken, cut into eight or ten pieces, gives roughly the same amount of meat.
- Cornstarch instead of flourArgo and Kingsford's are cornstarch, and three tablespoons is a very light dusting rather than a dredge. It browns faster and darker than flour and gives a thin, crisp shell rather than a craggy crust, so keep the heat moderate while browning or it will scorch before the chicken colours evenly.
- The thirty-minute steamBrowning then covering and cooking gently is the point of the method, but time is not a doneness test. Go by an internal temperature of 165F at the thickest part of the thigh, away from the bone; breast pieces will get there sooner and can be lifted out first.
- The white sauceTwo tablespoons cornstarch to a pint of milk is about a medium sauce, thinner than a coating one. Slurry the cornstarch in a little cold milk before it goes into the hot drippings, pour off most of the fat first, and bring it to a full boil for a minute or the starch will taste raw.
- Currant jellyIt is listed among the ingredients and then never mentioned again. Presumably it was to be passed at the table in a small dish, as a sweet-tart foil to the fried chicken and cream gravy.
- Potato or rice croquettesThese are shaped, breaded and fried, and are a separate recipe entirely. Roasted potatoes or plain rice serve the same function on the plate if you are not making them.
- YieldSix to eight servings as written, or four to six from a single modern chicken.
Chicken Maryland is the Chesapeake style of pan-frying young chicken and serving it with a milk or cream gravy made from the pan drippings, and it travelled a long way from home: by the early twentieth century British and Continental hotel menus listed poulet Maryland with corn fritters and bacon, and later with fried banana, garnishes that had little to do with Maryland home cooking. This version comes from a manufacturer's cookbook, one of very many issued by American food companies in the 1910s and 1920s, and the tell is that cornstarch replaces the traditional flour in both the dredge and the gravy while corn oil replaces the lard or butter. The dish is being used as a vehicle for products of the same corn-milling company. That said, the technique it describes -- brown hard, then cover and cook gently in the pan -- is the older Southern method rather than the deep-fried version more familiar later, and it tends to produce a moister bird.