Fricassee is picnic food when dining indoors. It’s mentioned in Samuel Foote’s The Nabob (1772) and Mary Belson Elliott’s The Mice and Their Pic Nic (1809). Had Elliott needed a recipe, she might have found it in Mrs. Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery, Formed Upon Principles of Economy, and Adapted to the Use of Private Families (1806).
Fricassee of Chickens
Boil rather more than half, in a small quantity of water: let them cool; then cut up; and put to simmer in a little gravy made of the liquor they were boiled in, and a bit of veal or mutton, onion, mace, and lemon-peel, some white pepper, and a bunch of sweet herbs. When quite tender, keep them hot while you thicken the sauce in the following manner: Strain it off, and put it back into the sauce-pan with a little salt, a scrape of nutmeg, and a bit of flour and butter: give it one boil; and when you are going to serve, beat up the yolk of an egg, add half a pint of cream, and stir them over the fire, but don’t let it boil. It will be quite as good without the egg.
The gravy may be made (without any other meat) of the necks, feet, small wing-bones, gizzards, and livers; which are called the trimmings of the fowls.
Rundell’s sandwich suggestion for cold brisket is a picnic favorite.
Salt a bit of brisket, thin part of the flank, or the tops of the ribs, with salt and saltpetre five days, then boil it gently till extremely tender: put it under a great weight, or in a cheese-press, till perfectly cold.
It eats excellently cold, and for sandwiches.
See Mrs. Rundell [Maria Eliza Rundell]. A New System of Domestic Cookery, Formed Upon Principles of Economy, and Adapted to the Use of Private Families By a Lady (London: John Murray, 1806). This recipe is from an American edition in 1807; http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_03.cfm