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Chicken Patties
One-half pint of cream, one large teaspoonful flour, salt and pepper. Let cream come to a boil (not boil), mix the flour with cold milk; stir into boiling cream; add one pint of cold chicken cut into dice. Fill puff paste shells, and serve hot.
A creamed-chicken filling for pastry shells, written in the compressed style of its period. The measurements are by volume throughout, including the chicken.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup. Use heavy or whipping cream; the sauce is thickened by only a teaspoon of flour and relies on the cream's fat to body up.
- "Let cream come to a boil (not boil)"Bring it just to the point where the surface trembles and steam rises, then hold it there. Cream at a full rolling boil will scorch on the pan bottom and can break.
- The flour slurryA large teaspoon of flour whisked smooth into a tablespoon or two of cold milk, then poured into the hot cream while stirring. Lumps come from adding dry flour or warm milk, not from the quantity.
- Cook the flour outOnce thickened, keep it at a bare simmer two or three minutes, stirring. A teaspoon of raw flour in a cup of cream tastes pasty otherwise.
- A pint of diced chickenRoughly 10 ounces of picked cooked meat, about the yield of two poached breasts or the usable meat from a small roast bird. The recipe says only "cut into dice"; a small dice sits best in the shells.
- Reheat, do not simmerThe chicken is already cooked. Add it off the heat or on the lowest setting and warm it through for a minute; longer and it turns stringy and squeezes out water that thins the sauce.
- Puff paste shellsBought vol-au-vent cases, or rounds of puff pastry baked in a hot oven until dry and browned. The recipe assumes the shells are already made. Fill at the last moment, since the sauce softens the pastry.
- YieldEnough for six to eight small shells, or four as a lunch dish. Season assertively; cream and chicken both need more salt than seems right.
Creamed chicken in a pastry case is the plainest member of a family that includes the French bouchée and vol-au-vent, and by the late nineteenth century versions of it were common at American luncheons, church suppers and receptions, where a filled shell could be eaten standing up with one hand. The recipe measures cooked meat by the pint, in keeping with the period's general preference for volume measure, and it assumes the reader already has cold chicken left from a roast and shells either bought or made separately.