One recipe in this series carries a name. We never learn who Miss Charlotte was, and the column never names its own author either. Yet somebody kept her name fastened to her pot pie long enough for it to reach a newspaper in Shanghai. Alex D. Ketchum argues that credit is never a small question in a food business. Who gets named for the product maps who holds the power.1 Isabel Wilkerson describes caste as a system that assigns roles at birth, sorting one group into the menial work and another into the ownership.2 A cook whose name outlives her kitchen has bent that rule, even a little.
A chicken pie finished with a lid of unbaked biscuit dough rather than pastry — a southern kitchen economy that uses the same dough already made for breakfast.
Miss Charlotte’s Chicken Pot Pie
Ingredients
1 small stewing chicken
1 stalk celery
10 small white onions
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups chicken stock
8 unbaked baking powder biscuits, ½ inch thick
Directions
Disjoint and wash the fowl. Partly cover it with water, add the chopped celery and the onions, and simmer until just tender. Blend the softened butter with the flour and use the mixture to thicken two cups of the liquor in which the chicken cooked. Pour the thickened sauce over the cooked chicken and onions in a deep baking dish. Cover with the unbaked biscuits and bake in a hot oven until the biscuits brown well.
The China Press, September 11, 1936.
