City chicken

City chicken is an American entrée consisting of cubes of meat, typically pork, which have been placed on a wooden skewer , then fried and/or baked. Depending on the recipe, they may be breaded. Despite the name of the dish, city chicken almost never contains chicken. A similar dish once known as "mock chicken" was described as early as 1908. The first references to city chicken appeared in newspapers and cookbooks just prior to and during the Depression Era in a few cities such as Pittsburgh. City chicken typically has cooks using meat scraps to fashion a makeshift drumstick from them by skewering meat chunks. It was a working-class food item. During the Depression, cooks used pork or in many cases veal because it was then cheaper than chicken in many cities, especially meat packing centers such as Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Louisville, and Pittsburgh where such cuts were more readily available than chicken.

Source: Wikipedia