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To Fricassee a Chicken
Stews are often, but very incorrectly, termed fricassees. A fricassee is a combination of a saute and a stew, and the meat for a fricassee should always be browned before it is put to stew. This browning or sauteing is best done in a small quantity of clarified butter. To fricassee a chicken prepare a chicken as for stewing. Season the pieces with salt, and pepper, roll in flour, fry or saute until light brown in color, then place in the stewing kettle. Put a pint of water in the pan in which the chicken was browned and after it has simmered seven minutes pour it over the chicken. Cover the kettle closely and let the chicken simmer gently until cooked. Lift into a platter when done, and if there is not sufficient gravy add more water, and more flour, if required to that in the kettle, cook seven minutes, and strain over the chicken. Two tablespoonfuls of sweet cream added to the sauce or gravy improves it for chicken or veal. Lamb, mutton and veal are prepared in the same manner and fricasseed as chicken.
A brown fricassee, built on browned chicken and a pan-deglazed gravy. The book's insistence on browning first is the whole point of the method, and it is worth honoring.
- The hinge: brown properlyGet the pieces genuinely golden in hot fat, in batches, without crowding. If the pan steams rather than sizzles you lose the browned residue that becomes the gravy, and the dish drops back to the stew the author is objecting to.
- Clarified butterSpecified because whole butter's milk solids scorch at browning heat. Clarified butter, ghee, or a mix of butter and a neutral oil all work; plain butter alone will darken past pleasant.
- "Prepare a chicken as for stewing"Cut into serving pieces at the joints: two drumsticks, two thighs, two wings, breast halved or quartered. The book gives no weight; a modern 3 1/2 to 4 lb bird will yield roughly eight to ten pieces, though the older fowl usually meant by "stewing" would have been larger and tougher.
- The pint of water in the panThis is deglazing. Add the water while the pan is still hot, scrape the bottom hard, and let it reduce and gather the fond. Seven minutes is about right; the goal is a loosened, slightly concentrated liquid, not a measured volume.
- "Simmer gently until cooked"Roughly 30 to 40 minutes on the stovetop for dark meat, with the liquid barely trembling. Pull breast pieces earlier if they reach 165F, and never let the pot boil, or the meat tightens and shreds dry.
- Thickening at the endAdding raw flour directly to the gravy will give lumps and a pasty edge. Whisk it with a little cold water or soft butter first, then stir it in and hold at a simmer the full seven minutes to cook out the starch.
- "Sweet cream"Fresh, unsoured cream, the term distinguishing it from cream that has soured. Modern heavy cream is the equivalent; stir it in off the heat so the sauce does not break.
- Other meatsThe same method with veal shoulder, lamb, or mutton needs longer at a simmer, typically 1 1/2 to 2 hours, since the cuts are collagen-heavy in a way chicken is not.
Fricassee comes into English from the French fricass\em>fricassée<\/em>, from the verb fricasser<\/em>; the origin of fricasser<\/em> itself is uncertain, though it has long been associated with frying and with cutting up. By the eighteenth century the word named a whole family of dishes in which jointed meat was cooked in a thickened sauce rather than roasted whole. Cooks distinguished a white fricassee, where the meat was cooked without coloring and finished with cream and often egg yolk, from a brown fricassee like this one, where the flour and the fat are allowed to take color first -- so the book's insistence that browning is essential to the term is narrower than general usage. The pedantic opening line reads as characteristic of turn-of-the-century American household manuals, which were concerned to fix a vocabulary of French terms that had drifted in American use.