Chicken And Dumplings Look A Little Different In Delaware

It was the first state to ratify the Constitution and enter the Union. It's known for horseshoe crabs, blue chickens, and a whole bunch of corporations. It's the home state of President Joe Biden, and Aubrey Plaza. It may be one of the smallest states in America, but Delaware has more than a few claims to fame. But what kind of food is it best known for?

Delaware shares most of its famous food with other states. It's known for its crabs, with scores of shacks dotting the coastline, but it's somewhat overshadowed by Maryland in that category. You can find that infamous breakfast food, scrapple, on Delawarean tables, but this, too, is overshadowed by its association with Pennsylvania (specifically Philadelphia, which sits a little over 30 miles away from Wilmington). There is one innovation, however, that's quintessentially Delaware (well, sort of): the state's take on chicken and dumplings, "slippery dumplings."

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Southern comfort food knows about chicken and dumplings. Like a down-home version of matzo ball soup, the dish consists of a thick, gravy-like chicken broth with pieces of chicken and balls of biscuit dough floating in it. Although it's commonly claimed that it was invented to get families through the Depression, it likely originated in the antebellum South. It makes sense that Delaware, with its sizable poultry industry and its mid-Atlantic location (not too far removed from the South), would take to the dish. But they do it a little differently.

Instead of the traditional "drop" dumplings, which are made by scooping biscuit dough into the broth, slippery dumplings are rolled out until they're flat, noodle-like, and, well, slippery. (For this reason, they're sometimes called "slickers" or "slickies".) The experience is not unlike that of a very thick, very hearty chicken noodle soup, and you will find it in all sorts of old-fashioned diners in Delaware.

As mentioned, there are two different kinds of dumplings used in chicken and dumplings: drops and slickers. But where the slippery dumplings originated, and why they became so heavily associated with Delaware, remains unclear. A recipe by Virginia housekeeping writer Marion Cabell Tyree in 1879 called for rolling thin biscuit dough and adding it to chicken broth. There are plenty of mentions of "chicken slick" in North Carolina, as well. So why did the dish become so associated with Delaware?

The answer may have to do with the Pennsylvania Dutch. This group of devout Protestants has a dish called "bott boi", or chicken pot pie, that much more closely resembles chicken and slippery dumplings than the dish we know as chicken pot pie. It's certainly not impossible that the dish crossed the Delaware River and became the default way of making chicken and dumplings in the First State. As is often the case with food history, the truth of the matter is murky, but the food remains, and remains delicious.