A Culinary History of Kentucky by Fiona Young-Brown

Author:Fiona Young-Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2014-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

Chicken Gravy

Should you like gravy with your fried chicken (and who doesn’t?), this is a perfect side. It also goes well with mashed potatoes.

2 tablespoons of leftover drippings from frying the chicken

2 tablespoons flour

1½ cups milk

Chicken and Dumplings

The dumplings in this winter favorite are very different from English-style dumplings, which are dropped into the broth by spoonful to form light, fluffy rounds. Kentucky-style dumplings are rolled and cut into thin strips before being placed in the stew to cook.

1 whole chicken

1 large onion, sliced

2 carrots, sliced

salt and pepper

1 teaspoon thyme

1 cup flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ cup milk

1 egg (optional)

Place the chicken, onion and carrots in a Dutch oven and cover with water. Bring the water to a boil and cook until the chicken is done, about 1 hour. Remove the chicken from the pan and, when cool, strip the meat from the bones. Return the meat to the broth. Add salt, pepper and thyme to suit your tastes. Bring the broth back to a boil. To make the dumplings, sift the dry ingredients together. Add milk (and egg, if using) to create a dough. Roll out on a floured surface to about ¼-inch thickness. Then cut into strips. Drop into the boiling stew and cook for 10 to 15 minutes.

Where there are chickens, there’ll be eggs, and so it is at the Kentucky dinner table. So popular they merit their own specific serving tray, complete with indentations to hold each egg, the deviled egg (or, as some churchgoing folk prefer, the dressed egg) is a standard at picnics, meals, church events and so on. It may not have originated in Kentucky, or even in the United States, but it is certainly considered southern.

The idea of boiling eggs and eating with pepper dates back to Roman times, and by the thirteenth century, Spanish cooks were stuffing them with an assortment of herbs, spices, raisins and cheese. Flash-forward some three or four hundred years later, and mustard seemed to be a fairly standard part of the filling. The term “deviled” first appeared in the eighteenth century to describe food that had been highly seasoned. By the nineteenth century, one could find recipes for deviled kidneys, deviled ham and, of course, deviled eggs. Recipes for them in nineteenth-century cookbooks are few and far between. Even cookbooks from the early twentieth century have a tendency to list them under other names. Mrs. Dull offered a recipe for stuffed eggs, the stuffing comprising mustard, pickles and bacon. Marion Flexner shared a friend’s recipe for Eggs Derby, in which the hard-boiled eggs are cut in half and the yolks mixed with cream, sweetbreads and mushrooms before being topped with cheese and reheated in the oven.

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