Back in the old CWi Cookbook section we chose a number of historic recipes and actually made them, at home. One of the more popular results of this project was an item called “Chicken Pudding – Old Virginia Way.” Here’s the recipe as it appears in the 1875 version of Anna Maria Collins’   The Great Western Cook Book, Or Table Receipts, Adapted to Western Housewifery:

Take two very young tender chickens, cut them up, wash them in cold water, until perfectly clean and white, wipe them very dry with a linen napkin, roll them up closely, while you prepare your batter.

Break eight eggs in a pan, a tea-spoonful of salt, and one of black pepper, a quarter of a pound of butter, eight heaped table-spoonsful of flour, one quart of rich milk; beat this mixture until it is very smooth and light; then put in the chickens, stir it well, and pour it in a pan well buttered, set it in a very hot oven or stove; after it commences to brown on top, put a sheet of white paper on the top. It will take more than one hour to bake it.

Modern-Day Adaptation:

For “rich milk”, we used a blend of whole milk and Half-and-Half. We baked this dish in a 400 degree oven for 2 1/2 hours. After the first hour, we covered with aluminum foil in place of paper. Note that both raw eggs and raw chicken begin this dish, necessitating extra-long cooking to ensure thorough doneness.

Results:

The dish was tested by three people. All agreed that the “Pudding” which forms tasted like scrambled eggs, and enjoyed it. The chicken was as tender as could possibly be hoped for, with a pleasant taste that permeated the meat. A delicious entree which we served with Broccoli in cheese sauce – a good vegetable option.

For a family of three or four you might want to halve all ingredients. Using one chicken, and 1/2 of all other ingredients, we were left with the pictured result, which easily fed three adults with plenty left over.

A note on the amount of eggs – we used 4 “Jumbo” sized eggs. Eggs in the 1860’s tended towards the small side, and our dish could easily have been made with a smaller number of the larger eggs.

          

1 chicken, cut up
Butter
Mushrooms
Parsley
Flour
Stock or water
White wine
Yolks of 1 or 2 eggs
Lemon juice or vinegar

Cut a chicken in pieces and put it in a stewpan with a little butter; add to it some mushrooms, parsley, sprinkle flour over, and shake them; moisten it with stock or water; and white wine; when it has boiled once, take it from the fire and put in the yolks of one or two eggs, and a little vinegar or lemon-juice.

From The Cook’s Own Book by “A Boston Housekeeper” (Mrs. N. K. M. Lee), Boston, 1832

Comment: And you thought the concept of “fast food” was a new one? Ha. While the “in a minute” is a bit of an exaggeration, this is about as close as you’re going to come when starting out with a dead chicken and a few items from the pantry. We suspect that the chicken pieces were supposed to be taken out of the pan before the egg yolks were mixed in to thicken the sauce, and the results then poured over the chicken parts before serving. But that is just a guess on our part, so deal with the matter as seems best to you.

          

Chickens, whole if small (fryers) or cut up if large (broilers)
1 pint water
Salt
White pepper, ground
Nutmeg, grated
Mace
1 tbs. butter, rolled in flour (optional)
Livers, gizzards and hearts of chickens
Yolks of 5 eggs, hard-boiled
Sliced ham (optional)
Forcemeat (stuffing) balls (optional)
2-3 oz. macaroni, broken up and cooked separately (optional)
Layer of pie crust or puff paste, top only

Pick, clean and singe the chickens; if they are very young, keep them whole; if large, cut them in joints, and take off the skin, wash them well, parboil in a pint of water, season them with salt, white pepper, grated nutmeg, and mace mixed, and if whole, put into them a bit of butter rolled in flour, and a little of the mixed spices; lay them into a dish with the livers, and gizzards, and hearts well seasoned, add the gravy [water in which they were boiled], and yolks of five hard-boiled eggs; cover with a puff paste, and bake it for an hour.

Slices of cold ham and force-meat balls may be added to this pie. Or wash in cold water two or three ounces of macaroni, break it into small bits, simmer it for nearly half an hour in milk and water, drain and put it with the chickens into the dish, and also an ounce of butter.

From The Good Housekeeper by Sarah Josepha Hale, 1841

Comment: This recipe comes with so many options it is a bit of a challenge to figure out what to do. Whole small chickens or larger ones cut up? With thickener (the butter-rolled-in-flour) or without? Added macaroni? Ham and stuffing rolled into balls? And just what was “macaroni” in the 1860s anyway? This is part of what makes historic cooking fun. This dish is whatever you want it to be. Do be sure to boil the chicken somewhat before mixing it with the other ingredients to bake into a pie, lest it be underdone when the other ingredients are toasty and ready to eat. Aside from possible health concerns from undercooked poultry, you need the broth created by the boiling to moisten the pie itself.  And in answer to the macaroni question, it seems the term was applied to any sort of egg-and-flour noodle which was dried out rather than eaten fresh-made. If you have broken bits of lasagne lingering in the bottoms of boxes, this might be a good use for it.

          

1 chicken, cut up
1/2 lb. salt pork
Salt
Pepper
Flour
1 cup milk, or half milk, half cream
1 tbs. flour
1 tbs. butter
Parsley, chopped

Cut up half a pound of fat salt pork in a frying-pan, and fry until the grease is extracted, but not until it browns. Wash and cut up a young chicken (broiling size), soak in salt and water for half an hour; wipe dry, season with pepper and dredge with flour; then fry in the hot fat until each piece is a rich brown on both sides. Take up, drain, and set aside in a hot covered dish.

Pour into the gravy left in the frying-pan a cup of milk–half cream is better; thicken with a spoonful of flour and a table-spoonful of butter; add some chopped parsley, boil up, and pour over the hot chicken. This is a standard dish in the Old Dominion, and tastes nowhere else as it does when eaten on Virginia soil. The cream-gravy is often omitted, and the chicken served up dry, with bunches of fried parsley dropped upon it.

Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: Half a pound of lard (which is essentially what salt pork is, you are just doing the “rendering” process in miniature in the frying pan) would probably horrify a modern dietician, but it is unquestionably the way to produce the world’s best fried chicken. Let your conscience, your waistline, and (sigh) your most recent cholesterol readings be your guide as to how often you wish to partake of this delight. The gravy, of course, is where the true wickedness comes from, but once again, you will never taste better in your life. If you wish to feel virtuous, you may omit the step of frying the parsley and strew it over the chicken in its fresh green state.

          

2 guinea fowl, young
Stuffing of choice
Butter
Shallot, chopped
Parsley or summer savory
Browned flour
Currant or other tart jelly

A pair of young Guinea fowls, stuffed and roasted, basting them with butter until they are half done, deserves an honorable place upon our bill of fare. Season the gravy with a chopped shallot, parsley or summer savory, not omitting the minced giblets, and thicken with browned flour. Send around currant, or other tart jelly, with the fowl. A little ham, minced fine, improves the dressing.

Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: The guinea fowl was never a terribly common breed in America, and those who keep them nowadays do so in part for their large eggs and also for their extremely noisy response to the approach of a stranger (or in many cases a person they know perfectly well.) They provide the owner with the advantages of a guard dog without the fear that they will bite somebody and run up one’s insurance rates.

Writers of the period even comment on their rarity but also speak highly of their taste. Lettice Bryan compares them favorably to the turkey and Dr. Kitchiner says they can be substituted for pheasants if those birds have been promised for dinner and the cook runs short of supply.

          

1 rump roast
Water
1 pint red wine
Carrots
Turnips
1 head celery
garlic
Ground cloves
Salt and pepper
Scraped horseradish
Stuffing (”forcemeat”) to taste

Take out as much of the bone as can be done with a saw, that it may lie flat on the dish, stuff it with forcemeat made as before directed, lay it in a pot with two quarts of water, a pint of red wine, some carrots and turnips cut in small pieces and strewed over it, a head of cellery cut up, a few cloves of garlic, some pounded cloves, pepper and salt, stew it gently till sufficiently done, skim the fat off, thicken the gravy, and serve it up; garnish with little bits of puff paste nicely baked, and scraped horse-radish.

From The Virginia Housewife, or, Methodical Cook, by Mary Randolph, 1860 edition of 1831 book.

Comment: Mrs. Randolph does not tell us how big a rump she wants us to cook, but from the quantity of water we would guess it is a fairly large one. The days of mechanized meat cutting and the packaging of ever-smaller cuts in individualized plastic trays lay far in the future. And that’s not a typo in the recipe; that was how Ms. Randolph spelled “celery.” Standardized spelling lay in the future as well.

          

1 spare-rib of pork
Flour
Butter
Sage leaves, powdered
Pepper

A bacon spare-rib usually weighs about eight or nine pounds, and will take from two to three hours to roast it thoroughly; not exactly according to its weight, but the thickness of the meat upon it, which varies very much. Lay the thick end nearest to the fire.

A proper bald spare-rib of eight pounds weight (so called because almost all the meat is pared off), with a steady fire, will be done in an hour and a quarter. There is so little meat on a bald spare-rib, that if you have a large, fierce fire, it will be burned before it is warm through. Joint it nicely, and crack the ribs across as you do ribs of lamb.

When you put it down to roast, dust on some flour, and baste it with a little butter; dry a dozen sage leaves, and rub them through a hair-sieve, and put them into the top of a pepper-box; and about a quarter of an hour before the meat is done, baste it with butter; dust the pulverized sage over it.

Make it a general rule never to pour gravy over any thing that is roasted; by so doing, the dredging, &c., is washed off, and it eats insipid.

The Cook’s Oracle by William Kitchiner, MD, New York, 1829

Comment: This recipe clearly dates to the days of cooking over a kitchen hearth, essentially a large open fireplace. A whole range of implements, usually of cast iron, were required to hold the food in place, keep it the proper distance from the heat at each stage of cooking, and also to rotate it in such a way as to expose all surfaces of the meat to the flames. The technique of “dredging” is almost universal with hearth-roasted meats but we (never having tried it) are unsure as to exactly how it works–it would seem that the fat and other juices dripping off the roast would carry the dredging material, be it flour or spices, off into the drip pan with it. If we ever get a house big enough to hold a fireplace big enough to try this in, we’ll let you know. But however you do it, may your roasts never be insipid!

          

Roast or boiled chickens
2 heads celery, inner & lower (white) parts only
8 egg yolks, hard-boiled
3/4 to 1 teaspoon salt
3/4 to 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, ground
1/4 c. mustard, preferably brown or Dijon style
1/2 c. vinegar
3/4 c. olive oil

The fowls for this purpose should be young and fine. You may either boil or roast them. They must be quite cold. Having removed all the skin and fat, and disjointed the fowls, cut the meat from the bones into very spall pieces, not exceeding an inch. Wash and split two large fine heads of celery, and cut thewhite part into pieces also about an inch long; and having mixed the chicken and celery together, put them into a deep china dish, cover it and set it away.

It is best not to prepare the dressing till just before the salad is to be eaten, that it may be as fresh as possible. Have ready the yolks of eight hard-boiled eggs. Put them into a flat dish, and mash them to a paste with the back of a wooden spoon. Add to the egg a small tea-spoonful of fine salt, the same quantity of cayenne pepper, half a gill of made mustard, a jill or a wine-glass and a half of vinegar, and rather more than two wine-glasses of sweet oil. Mix all these ingredients thoroughly; stirring them a long time till they are quite smooth.

The dressing should not be put on till a few minutes before the salad is sent in; as by lying in it the chicken and celery will become tough and hard. After you pour it on, mix the whole well together with a silver fork.

chicken salad should be accompanied with plates of bread and butter, and a plate of biscuits. It is a supper dish, and is brought in with terrapin, oysters, &c.

Cold turkey is excellent prepared as above.

An inferior salad may be made with cold fillet of veal, instead of chickens.

Cold boiled lobster is very fine cut up and drest in this manner, only substituting for celery, lettuce cut up and mixed with the lobster.

From Miss Leslie’s Directions for Cookery, Eliza Leslie, Philadelphia, 1851

Comments: One of the challenges of dealing with historic recipes is the wide variety of terms used to denote measurements in the days before such things were standardized. A “jill” (sometimes seen spelled “gill”) is about 4 ounces, or about half a modern measuring cup. “Teaspoon” and “tablespoon” meant the literal utensils, which like those in your kitchen drawer may be of a variety of sizes. The important thing is the proportion, which is 1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoons. Use modern ones and you won’t be far off here.

As to the importance of the whiteness of the celery, this may be an esthetic issue as much as it is one of taste or texture. White is a symbol of purity and cleanliness, a notion which seems to transfer into food sometimes. In addition there may be a class issue involved: discarding the majority of the celery, simply because it is a brighter green, would be an indulgence only the wealthier would bother with. Miss Leslie is normally a very practical cook as best as we can tell, not obsessed with impressing Mrs. La-Te-Dah, so perhaps we are being overly suspicious. Make it with whatever parts and amounts of celery seems fitting to you.

Oh, and the “mix with a silver fork” isn’t an example of snobbery either. Eating and cooking utensils of the time were often made of what are today considered “base” metals like pewter and Brittania ware, which could include metals considered unsafe today. Some of metals would react badly with eggs and cause them to become discolored, therefore the preference for non-reactive silver. Or perhaps Miss Leslie was afraid of vampires. Who knows.