Cross Creek Cookery

Cross Creek Cookery is one of my favorite cookbooks.  It is that great combination of recipes and stories about them.  It was written by the Pulitzer Prize winning author, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.  She complied it shortly after writing a novel of the same name.  In fact, like many a Southern cookbooks, most of the recipes in Cross Creek Cookery actually belong to Idella Parker, who was Rawlings maid for ten years.  Parker wrote of their time together in a memoir entitled, Idella: Marjorie Rawlings Perfect Maid.   I believe she still lives in Florida and is 98 year-old, now.

Miss Idella at the stove.

Rawlings bought a 72-acre orange grove in a little Florida town named Cross Creek.   Since she was a child, Rawlings had wanted to be a writer.  She became acquainted with the legendary editor, Maxwell Perkins.  She sent him several historical novels and chatty letters about life in Cross Creek.  Perkins finally told her that her novels sucked but the stories about Cross Creek were wonderful and advised her to white about where she was.

She headed Perkins' advice.  Her most famous novel, The Yearling, grew out of a tale about a boy, his father and a young deer he raised.  It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.  Not everyone in Florida liked the way they were portrayed by Rawlings.  One woman threatened to horse whip Rawlings until she was dead and another sued her for libel.

I adore this recipe for Mother's Jellied Chicken.   It fits perfectly into the Molly Hollifield Jones Dinner we wrote about at Lucindaville.  Harry Lowe and I always laugh, however, as we are pretty sure Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' mama never made this dish nor did Rawlings.  That job usually fell to Miss Idella.

Mother’s Jellied Chicken

Boil a whole, dressed chicken, about three and one-half pounds, in enough water to cover, until very tender.  Remove the chicken and boil the liquor down to one quart.  Cut the meat in small pieces, cutting across the grain to give square or rectangular pieces rather than shredded fragments.  Discard any portions of the skin that may be too coarse.  Season the meat lightly with salt and pepper.  To the quart of hot stock, add two tablespoons of gelatin soaked in two tablespoons of cold water, one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, and more salt to taste.  Strain the stock over the chicken, mix lightly but thoroughly, and put into a fancy mould or into a long deep rectangular loaf tin.  Cool, and chill in ice box until set.  Serve on lettuce with mayonnaise on the side.  Serves eight generously.

In her rich commentary, Rawlings goes on to further describe the dish stating:

The secret of the goodness of this jellied chicken is its very simplicity.  I have had jellied chicken fixed up with an assortment of celery, cucumber, carrots, hard-boiled eggs and green peppers and pimentos and what-not.  All these alien and dressy ingredients destroy the melting flavor.

 My recommendation is to serve it up with a little horseradish sauce, to give it a kick.  


UPDATE:  Check out our mould of Queen Elizabeth in Mother's Jellied Chicken.

Kettner's Book Of The Table

Fashionable restaurants were a Victorian delight. In London, the most fashionable was that of Auguste Kettner. The former chef to Napoleon III, Kettner opened a Soho restaurant 1867 which was known for its extravagance, champagne, and gastronomic delicacies.

When Kettner's Book Of The Table was published, it was assumed, for obvious reasons that the book was written by Kettner. In truth, the book was penned by the long standing London critic, E. S. Dallas. Dallas fell on hard times and was a friend of Kettner. One can assume that Dallas wrote the book in exchange for free meals. In a 1912 version published by Kettner, himself, he gives some credit to Dallas.

Dallas has very strong emotions about aspic and as a Southerner, I feel for him.

"The most appropriate sauce for cold meat is a jelly, of half jelly, of some sort: and the French have invented one jellied sauce to go with cold viands --aspic. It is not to be supposed that one and the same sauce will suit every meat alike, every taste alike, or even the same taste at different times. We cannot take the same everlasting aspic with cold meat all year around. But the cookery books, with scarcely an exception, give one single recipt for savory jelly, and then call it aspic, though it does not contain a particle if aspic in it."

So what is his proper way to make aspic?

Aspic

Boil down calves feet with a faggot of potherbs(Faggot, No.6). When this is ready, add to it for a final flavor sherry or Marsala, and some tarragon vinegar in which a faggot of ravigote herbs have boiled. Test the strength of the jelly, clarify it with white of an egg, and strain through a jelly bag.

There are a lot faggots in this recipe which Dallas explains:

"Faggots are to the kitchen garden what bouquets or nosegays are to the flower garden."

Faggot no. 6 consists of carrots, onions, cloves and sweet herbs while the Ravigote has tarragon, chervil, burnet and chives.

You must love a man who is so terrible concerned with his aspic!