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April 26
Menu: Mushroom Canapes; Chicken, a la King; Potato Croquettes; Tomato Mayonnaise; Cheese Drops; Washington Pie; Coffee Chicken, a la King-1/2 boiled chicken (one pint in thick pieces), 2 tableone pint in thick pieces), 2 tablespoons Crisco, 2 fresh mushrooms, 1 cup cream, ½ cup sherry wine, yolks 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 green pepper and 1 red pepper, cut in long thin strips. Melt Crisco, add mushrooms, cook 5 minutes. Add chicken, heat through, add salt, wine and the strips of peppers. (The chicken should be removed from bone in long thick pieces.) Beat yolks until light, add cream, cook over boiling water or in chafing dish, stirring constantly until thickened, about 12 minutes; then pour over hot chicken mixture and serve at once on toast.
A chafing-dish supper dish from the Crisco calendar, built on a stirred egg-and-cream sauce rather than a flour roux. The whole thing hinges on that custard: it must thicken over water and never boil.
- The sauce is a custardYolks beaten with cream and cooked over simmering water will curdle if the water boils hard or the bowl touches it. Stir constantly and pull it the moment it coats the spoon; 12 minutes is a fair estimate but judge by texture, not the clock.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, introduced by Procter & Gamble in 1911 and the reason this book exists. Butter is the obvious substitute here and tastes better in a cream sauce; use 2 tablespoons.
- Two fresh mushroomsCounting mushrooms by the piece suggests whole caps rather than weight, and they were likely larger than today's buttons; reckon on perhaps 3 to 4 oz of button or cremini, sliced thick.
- Half a boiled chickenThe recipe defines the quantity for you: about a pint of meat pulled off the bone in long thick pieces, roughly 8 to 10 oz. Poached breast and thigh from a 3 lb bird will do it.
- The sherryHalf a cup is a good deal of wine. The recipe does add it to the hot chicken in the pan, but only briefly; if you want it less sharp, let it reduce over the heat for a minute or two before the sauce goes on.
- PeppersCut in long thin strips and added at the end, they stay crisp. If you want them soft, cook them with the mushrooms instead.
- No thickener but eggThere is no flour or cornstarch here, so the sauce stays loose and pools into the toast. Serve on sturdy toast, not soft bread, and plate immediately.
- YieldTwo generous servings, or four as a light lunch course.
Chicken a la King belongs to the late nineteenth-century hotel and chafing-dish repertoire, and its origin is disputed among several claimants — a Delmonico's patron named Keene, the Brighton Beach Hotel, and a London hotelier are all traditionally named, none conclusively. By 1912 it appears to have been familiar American restaurant fare, and it was exactly the sort of genteel, faintly luxurious dish a shortening manufacturer wanted associated with its product. Its appearance in a dated calendar of dinners reflects the book's real purpose: to show housekeepers that Crisco could stand in for butter and lard across an entire year of respectable menus, from plain boiled dinners to a chafing-dish supper with sherry in it.