Wednesday, November 25, 2009

A Thanksgiving Breakfast to Prepare.

In a certain large continent in the northern hemisphere today, all thoughts are undoubtedly turned to the preparation of tomorrow night’s big turkey dinner. The danger is that the focus on dinner will be so great, that breakfast will be poorly planned – and you know how important a good breakfast is, don’t you?

A nice book called What to get for breakfast: with more than one hundred different breakfasts, and full directions for each (1882), helps with fine suggestions for several Thanksgiving breakfasts.

Modern Thanksgiving Breakfast.
Chicken Pie
Baked Potatoes Warm Biscuit
Apple Sauce Coffee.


Chicken Pie.

Cook the chicken as for the ancestral chicken pie [below]. When done, remove all the meat from the bones and flake it. Do not have it like mince, but in long, thin and manifest pieces. Line a large, deep soup plate with a thick paste, made per ancestral chicken pie rule. Fill the plate with chicken, sprinkle a little flour through it, adding butter, salt and some of the liquor in which it was boiled. Cover with a thick paste and bake a nice brown. Be sure you brown the under crust. Serve with a gravy made from the liquor in which the chickens were boiled.

Chicken Pie [Ancestral].

For a pie boil the chickens in water enough to barely cover them. Skim them. When tender or done take them out into a platter and carve them the same as if to be served on the table. Remove the skin if very thick. Have ready a deep baking dish, lined with a thick paste. Have the dish proportioned to the quantity of chicken you wish to
use. Arrange the chicken so tiiat the same kind of pieces may not come out together, when served. Sprinkle each layer with a little flour and salt. Fill the dish nearly full with the liquor in which the chickens were boiled, but not so full as to be in danger of boiling over. Cover with an upper paste and close the edges very carefully. Bake nearly an hour, or till the crust is handsomely done. The crust for chicken pie should be twice as thick as for fruit pies. Use butter in the liquor if you prefer it.


Paste for Chicken Pie.
One quart of flour.
One teaspoonful of salt.
Two teaspoonfuls of cream-tartar.
One teaspoonful of soda.
One pint of sweet milk. *
One cupful of butter.
Mix these ingredients the same as for short cake, avoiding too much flour. This makes a nice and tender paste.


Quotation for the Day …

Do we need to have 280 brands of breakfast cereal? No, probably not. But we have them for a reason - because some people like them. It's the same with baseball statistics.
Bill James

2 comments:

Cynthia said...

And speaking of pie, I'm so enjoying your book on the global history of pie.

The Old Foodie said...

Thankyou Cynthia!