I was flipped through a hundred-year-old cookbook, and a recipe for Chicken Wiggles caught my eye. What was this food with such a strange name?
I read the recipe, and it was a recipe for creamed chicken, peas, celery, and walnuts. Chicken Wiggles is served on toast (though it would also work well with rice). I’m always looking for tasty lunch foods, so I decided to give the recipe a try.
Chicken Wiggles was delightful. It is somewhat similar to Chicken a la King, but the walnuts added a delightful crunch. And, celery is not typically included in Chicken a la King recipes.
Intrigued by the name, I did an online search for “wiggle recipes” and discovered that there is also a dish called Shrimp Wiggle. Wiggles are quick and easy to prepare. According to The Takeout, the recipe for Shrimp Wiggle was even included in some editions of The Joy of Cooking.
Wiggles were a popular chafing dish food a hundred-year-ago, and college students sometimes made them in their dorm rooms using cans of Sterno, often for late night impromptu parties.
Here is the original recipe:
This recipe calls for English walnuts. Years ago, regular walnuts were often referred to as English walnuts to distinguish them from black walnuts.
It worked fine to use egg yolks as the thickening agent in this recipe – though I wondered why flour wasn’t used to make a more typical white sauce. (When egg yolks are used to thicken a sauce, care needs to be used to keep the egg from curdling when added to the hot mixture.) Then I realized that this is a gluten free recipe. Gluten allergies were not a specific identified issue a hundred years ago, but people did more generally recognize food allergies. This recipe makes me wonder if the recipe author was allergic to wheat flour.
Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:
Chicken Wiggles (Creamed Chicken with Vegetables and Walnuts
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup cooked chicken, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1/2 cup green peas (canned, frozen, or fresh)
1/2 cup celery, chopped
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
toast
Step 1. Put the cream and milk in a saucepan, and scald using medium heat while stirring continuously.
Step 2. In the meantime, put egg yolks in a small bowl; stir until smooth. Place a small amount (approximately 1 – 2 tablespoons) of hot milk mixture into the bowl with the egg yolk, stir quickly. (The egg is first combined with a little of the hot mixture to prevent it from turning into scrambled eggs when introduced into the hot combination.) Add the egg mixture to the remaining hot mixture in the saucepan; stir.
Step 3. Add butter and salt. Cook until it thickens while stirring continuously.
Step 4. Stir in peas and celery; cook until heated through.
Step 5. Add walnuts; stir, and remove from heat.
Step 6. Serve immediately on toast (Rice could be substituted for the toast.)
Very popular in northern New England when I was growing up, either salmon pea wiggle or tuna pea wiggle, were staples, both my mom made, but usually the salmon. She would take a tall can of salmon, pick out the bones, save the juice for the white sauce. We served ours over potatoes.
It’s funny because someone was asking me the other day where the name wiggle came from and we couldn’t find any real plausible answers, so I think it will be a mystery.
Here is my own twist on the classic:
I learned something new. Until I read your comment, I hadn’t realized that wiggles were classic New England dishes. Thanks for sharing the link to your post for Smoked Salmon Wiggle. It looks wonderful and makes a beautiful presentation. I’m going to have to give it a try.
It was hearty, and inexpensive, so you could feed a lot of mouths on just a can of salmon!
Cooks in the past were very good at figuring out how to make tasty, nutritious (yet inexpensive) meals.
Thank you for this recipe! Although I’m not gluten intolerant, I do try to follow a low-carb, grain free way of eating. This should be a nice dish to try!
I think that you’ll like it.
I have never heard of a wiggle before.
I also had never heard of a “wiggle” before I came across the recipe in a hundred-year-old cookbook. I then started to research the name, and discovered that it had a fascinating history.
I thought with that name it might be an old school cafeteria offering.
It does sound like a recipe name that might be used to make a food appealing to children – though, based on my extremely limited research, I didn’t see anything about it being a common school cafeteria food. That said, I see a later comment that says that wiggles were popular school cafeteria foods in the 1950’s and 60’s
AI says chicken wiggle was a classic comfort food created in the 1930s and popular in the 1950s. Newspaper archives indicate the earliest recipe for chicken wiggle was in 1903. It was in many papers in 1907 and 1910. It was often on the menus of school cafeterias in the 1950s and 1960s.
It’s always a bit up in the air regarding the accuracy of AI responses, but the information it provided sounds very reasonable to me. Creamed foods served on toast were very popular during the mid-20th century.
We ate creamed salmon and peas on toast but never called it wiggles:)
My family also regularly ate creamed vegetables or fish on toast when I was a child, but like you, we never called them “wiggles.” Apparently, the term “wiggle” was only used in a few areas of the U.S.
Always fun to learn new food facts!
I love the name and it looks pretty tasty!
cheers
It’s a fun name for a dish.
I think I would savor every bite of this nutritious delight!