Stuffing
1 onion finely chopped. 1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley. 1 cup thick cream. 1/2 cup butter. ½ teaspoon celery salt. 1/4 teaspoon salt. 1/8 teaspoon black pepper.
PROCESS: Crush crackers with the hands, not too fine. Add nut meats, butter melted, cream, onion and parsley; mix well with a fork; add seasonings. If stuffing appears too dry add more cream (a cup of chopped apple or celery may be added). This is sufficient stuffing for one duck. 4 tablespoons butter. 1 slice onion. 5½ tablespoons flour.
This page has come down to us in poor shape: the ingredient list is missing its two main components and has picked up three lines belonging to the sauce recipe that followed. The method is intact enough to work from, but you will be supplying some quantities yourself.
- The missing quantitiesThe process calls for crackers and nut meats, neither of which appears in the list. Judging by the cup of cream and half cup of butter, roughly 4 cups of coarsely crushed crackers and 1 cup of nuts fills a duck; treat these as estimates, not a conversion of the original.
- The stray lines"4 tablespoons butter. 1 slice onion. 5½ tablespoons flour." at the end does not belong to the stuffing; the proportions look like the beginning of a flour-thickened sauce printed alongside it. Ignore it.
- CrackersPeriod recipes mean plain unsweetened soda or common crackers, not saltines with a heavy salt crust and not seasoned crumbs. If you use saltines, drop the added quarter teaspoon of salt.
- Thick creamHeavy or whipping cream. In period usage "thick cream" meant the richest cream skimmed from the top, so the mixture may take slightly more than a cup before it stops looking dry.
- Celery saltA teaspoon and a half of celery salt across one duck's worth of stuffing is on the assertive side for modern palates and adds salt of its own. Start with a teaspoon, taste the raw mix, and adjust.
- Butter meltedMelt the half cup and pour it warm over the crackers so it coats rather than stays in lumps. Mix with a fork only, as directed; the stuffing should stay loose and crumbly, not pasted together.
- Filling the duckPack loosely and stop short of full. The mixture swells as it takes up cream and pan drippings, and a tight cavity keeps the center cool.
- Temperature and donenessNo oven heat is given. Roast the duck as you normally would and check the stuffing itself with a thermometer at the deepest point: it needs 165F. Any surplus can be baked separately in a covered dish, moistened with a little more cream.
- YieldOne duck, which is two to four servings depending on the bird. Double it for a goose.
Cracker stuffing was a common American alternative to bread stuffing at a time when factory crackers were cheap, shelf-stable and widely kept in the pantry. A rich stuffing of crackers, nuts and cream suits a fatty bird whose drippings soak into it during roasting, and the suggested additions of apple or celery follow the logic that still governs duck cookery: acidity and crunch against the fat. Celery salt, which appears here in a generous dose, was sold bottled and was a fashionable seasoning in this period.