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March 19
Menu: Chickens Stewed with Olives; Chartreuse of Spinach; Baked Squash; Asparagus Salad; Rhubarb Tarts; Coffee Chickens Stewed with Olives-Cut 2 young chickens into joints and put to cook in 3 pints of water with pepper, salt and an onion. Cook until the chickens are very tender. Take up, drain and wipe chickens and fry them in Crisco till they brown. Strain water in which chickens were cooked and take a little more than 1½ a pint of it for sauce. Put this into the frying pan in which chickens were fried, thicken it a little, and into it put 2 dozens olives, chopped, and 1 tablespoon capers. When it is quite hot and smooth pour chickens and serve.
A two-stage dish: the birds are poached, then browned, then sauced with the reduced poaching liquid. The verbatim text runs straight into the next day's menu heading, so ignore the trailing "Princess Soup / Veal Chops, Horseradish Sauce" — that belongs to March 20.
- The hinge: dry the chickenWiping the drained pieces is not fussiness. Poached poultry carries a film of water that will spit violently in hot fat and prevent browning; pat every piece thoroughly dry and let it air a few minutes before it meets the pan.
- Two young chickens"Young chickens" in this period generally meant small broilers, perhaps 2 to 2½ lb each, though the recipe gives no weight. A single bird of about 4 to 5 lb, cut into eight pieces, is roughly the same quantity and serves four to six.
- Salt twice overChopped olives, capers and a reduced poaching liquid all bring salt. Season the initial cooking water lightly and correct the sauce only at the end.
- Strained broth for the sauceThe printed page was checked and the sauce takes a little more than half a pint of the strained cooking liquid, slightly over a cup. The rest of the 3 pints is worth keeping as stock rather than discarding.
- Thicken it a littleNo thickener is named. A tablespoon of flour stirred into the fat left in the frying pan before the broth goes in, cooked a minute, gives the light, smooth sauce described.
- Olives and capersThe two dozen were most likely brined green olives, Spanish or similar, rather than oil-cured or canned black; drain and rinse them, and rinse the capers too. Add them only at the end so they warm through rather than stew.
- "Pour chickens"A dropped word in the original: pour the sauce over the chickens.
- CriscoAny neutral solid or liquid shortening browns the pieces the same way. Cooking times: simmer 30 to 40 minutes until tender, then brown over medium-high heat, about 4 minutes a side.
Crisco was introduced in 1911, and the promotional cookbook built around it was the volume titled A Calendar of Dinners, which incorporates The Story of Crisco — a hydrogenated vegetable shortening offered as a substitute for both lard and butter, and said to have been marketed partly to kosher households who could use one fat in place of two. The recipe collection is organised as "A Calendar of Dinners," a full year of menus, which is why a chicken dish sits on a page headed "Coffee": the book's editorial furniture and its dated menus run together. Chicken with olives and capers is a long-standing Mediterranean pairing, and in this recipe the bird is poached before frying, the reduced cooking liquid becoming the sauce, so nothing was wasted.