Fry one or two chickens as above, using only flour to roll them in. Three or four slices of salt pork may be used, cutting them in bits, and frying brown, before putting in the chicken. When fried, lay the pieces in a saucepan, and cover with warm water, adding one teaspoonful of salt and a saltspoonful of pepper. Cover closely, and stew one hour, or longer if the chickens are old. Take up the pieces, and thicken the gravy with one tablespoonful of flour, first stirred smooth in a little cold water. Or the flour may be added to the fat in the pan after frying, and water enough for a thin gravy, which can all be poured into the saucepan, though with this method there is more danger of burning. If not dark enough, color with a teaspoonful of caramel. By adding a chopped onion fried in the fat, and a teaspoonful of curry-powder, this becomes a curry, to be served with boiled rice.
WHITE FRICASSEE.
Cut up the chicken as in brown fricassee, and stew without frying for an hour and a half, reducing the water to about one pint. Take up the chicken on a hot platter. Melt one tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan, and add a heaping tablespoonful of flour, stirring constantly till smooth. Pour in slowly one cup of milk, and, as it boils and thickens, add the chicken broth, and serve. This becomes a pot-pie by adding biscuit-crust as in rule for veal pot-pie, p. 150, and serving in the same way. The same crust may also be used with a brown fricassee, but is most customary with a white.
CHICKEN PIE.
Make a fricassee, as above directed, either brown or white, as best liked, and a nice pie-crust, as on p. 224, or a biscuit-crust if pie-crust is considered too rich. Line a deep baking-dish with the crust; a good way being to use a plain biscuit-crust for the lining, and pie-crust for the lid. Lay in the cooked chicken; fill up with the gravy, and cover with pastry, cutting a round hole in the centre; and bake about three-quarters of an hour. The top can be decorated with leaves made from pastry, and in this case will need to have a buttered paper laid over it for the first twenty minutes, that they need not burn. Eat either cold or hot. Game pies can be made in the same way, and veal is a very good substitute for chicken. Where veal is used, a small slice of ham may be added, and a little less salt; both veal and ham being cut very small before filling the pie.
BOILED TURKEY.
Clean, stuff, and truss the fowl selected, as for a roasted turkey. The body is sometimes filled with oysters. To truss in the tightest and most compact way, run a skewer under the leg-joint between the leg and the thigh, then through the body and under the opposite leg-joint in the same way; push the thighs up firmly close to the sides; wind a string about the ends of the skewer, and tie it tight. Treat the wings in the same way, though in boiled fowls the points are sometimes drawn under the back, and tied there. The turkey may be boiled with or without cloth around it. In either case use boiling water, salted as for stock, and allow twenty minutes to the pound. It is usually served with oyster sauce, but parsley or capers may be used instead.
CHICKEN CROQUETTES.
Take all the meat from a cold roast or boiled chicken, and chop moderately fine. Mince an onion very small, and fry brown in a piece of butter the size of an egg. Add one small cup of stock or water; one saltspoonful each of pepper and mace; one teaspoonful of salt; the juice of half a lemon; two well-beaten eggs; and, if liked, a glass of wine. Make into small rolls like corks, or mold in a pear shape, sticking in a clove for the stem when fried. Roll in sifted cracker-crumbs; dip in an egg beaten with a spoonful of water, and again in crumbs; put in the frying-basket, and fry in boiling lard. Drain on brown paper, and pile on a napkin in serving.
A more delicate croquette is made by using simply the white meat, and adding a set of calf's brains which have been boiled in salted water. A cupful of boiled rice mashed fine is sometimes substituted for the brains. Use same seasoning as above, adding quarter of a saltspoonful of cayenne, omitting the wine, and using instead half a cup of cream or milk. Fry as directed. Veal croquettes can hardly be distinguished from those of chicken.