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Chicken en Casserole
1 tender chicken for roasting ½ cupful Crisco Salt and pepper 1 pint hot water 1 cupful hot sweet cream 2 cupfuls chopped mushrooms 1 tablespoonful chopped parsley Clean chicken, split down back, and lay breast upward, in casserole. Spread Crisco over breast, dust with salt and pepper, add hot water, cover closely and cook in hot oven one hour. When nearly tender, put in the cream, mushrooms, and parsley; cover again and cook twenty minutes Meats longer. Serve hot in the casserole. Oysters are sometimes substituted for mushrooms, and will be found to impart a pleasing flavor.
A braised split chicken from Procter & Gamble's promotional cookbook, which is why the shortening is measured in cupfuls rather than spoonfuls. A few conversions and one substantial adjustment are needed.
- The Crisco quantityA cup and a half of solid shortening smeared over one chicken is advertising, not cooking, and it will leave a pool of fat under the bird. Two to three tablespoons of butter or oil rubbed over the skin does everything this step needs.
- "Casserole"In 1913 this means a deep covered earthenware or enamelled pot brought to the table, not a shallow baking dish. A Dutch oven with a tight lid is the direct equivalent, and it can go from oven to table as the recipe intends.
- Oven heatA "hot oven" of the period is usually reckoned somewhere around 400-450F. Covered and with a pint of water in the pot the bird effectively braises, so 400F is ample and gives you a better chance of the breast not drying out.
- Doneness over timingOne hour plus twenty minutes suits a small 3 lb bird. Judge by temperature instead: 165F at the thickest part of the thigh, away from bone. A 4-5 lb chicken will want closer to an hour and a half in total.
- "Hot sweet cream"Sweet cream simply means unsoured, as opposed to soured cream. Use heavy cream, warmed, so it does not drop the pot temperature or split on contact.
- MushroomsTwo cupfuls chopped raw mushrooms will release a great deal of liquid into an already wet pot. Sauteing them first, then adding with the cream, keeps the sauce from thinning out.
- If you use the oystersShucked oysters need two or three minutes at most. Added at the start of the final twenty minutes they turn to rubber; stir them in with their liquor during the last few minutes off direct heat and let the residual heat firm their edges.
- YieldA split roasting chicken with sauce serves four. The cooking liquid will be loose; reduce it on the stovetop for a few minutes after the chicken comes out if you want it to coat.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with hydrogenated cottonseed oil, which the company had introduced two years earlier as a substitute for both lard and butter. That commercial purpose explains the shape of this recipe: an otherwise conventional braised chicken, of the sort found in dozens of contemporary household books, rewritten so that the new shortening appears in a conspicuously generous quantity. The dish itself belongs to the vogue for en casserole cookery that ran through American and English kitchens in the first decades of the century, when glazed earthenware pots suitable for serving at table became widely available and hostesses liked the informality of bringing the vessel straight from oven to sideboard. The oyster variation at the end is a reminder of how cheap and ordinary oysters still were in 1913, treated here as a mere alternative to mushrooms rather than a luxury.