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Forcemeat, Almond
Beat up the yolks of three eggs with a quarter of a pint of good cream, and flavour wi th a little nutmeg. Blanch and pound in a mortar three ounces of sweet almonds, using white of egg to moisten. Add these, with three-quarters of a pound of light bread-crumbs, and three ounces of butter broken into small bits, to the egg mixture. Stir in, lastly, the whites of the eggs whisked to a solid froth, and fill either capon or turkey.
A sweet-savoury bread stuffing of the kind Victorian cooks used for large poultry. It is straightforward apart from the units and the sheer quantity it makes.
- The cream measureA quarter of an imperial pint is 5 fl oz, or a generous half cup. If you work in US measures, half a cup is close enough.
- Bread-crumbsThree-quarters of a pound of "light" crumbs means soft fresh crumbs from a day-old loaf, not dried or toasted ones — roughly 6 to 7 cups, loosely packed. Dried crumbs of the same weight would absorb far more liquid and give a heavy, pasty forcemeat.
- Sweet almondsSimply ordinary almonds, as distinct from bitter almonds, which older books also sold and which are not safe to eat raw. Blanched whole almonds pounded with a little egg white are the point of the recipe; ground almond flour works but gives a smoother, less interesting texture.
- PoundingA food processor does the mortar's job in under a minute. Pulse rather than run it, and add the egg white as directed — the moisture stops the almonds turning oily and clumping into butter.
- CaponA castrated cockerel, fattened for tenderness and rarely sold now. A 4 to 5 lb roasting chicken is the practical substitute; the quantity here is really scaled for a turkey.
- YieldThis makes a very large amount — around 2 quarts of loose forcemeat, enough for a 14 to 16 lb turkey. Halve or quarter it for a chicken, and bake any surplus separately in a buttered dish at 350F for 30 to 40 minutes.
- The whisked whitesFold them in last and stuff the bird straight away. They are there to lighten the mixture, and they collapse if the forcemeat is beaten or left standing.
- Packing and temperatureFill the cavity loosely; a tightly packed stuffing insulates itself and heats slowly. The stuffing itself must reach 165F at the centre, which on a large bird usually means checking it separately from the thigh.
"Forcemeat" comes from the French farce, a stuffing, by way of the older English verb "to farce" — to stuff — and by Cassell's day the word covered everything from veal panadas to the sweetened bread mixtures used for poultry and game. Almonds in a savoury stuffing are a survival of medieval and early modern English cookery, where pounded almonds, cream and nutmeg were routine in dishes we would now class as meat courses rather than desserts; the sharp division between sweet and savoury is a later development. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery was assembled in the 1870s and reissued for decades afterwards. The pairing with capon or turkey marks it as a recipe for a substantial household table: both were expensive festival birds, and a rich almond forcemeat both stretched them and signalled the expense.