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Forcemeat for Roast Pig
Parboil a small onion, or two if the flavour be liked. Chop them very fine, with about half an ounce of powdered sage, five or six ounces of bread-crumbs, and a quarter of a pound of good fresh butter. Flavour highly with cayenne pepper and salt. Bind with egg. Onions are not always used for this forcemeat; they may be left out altogether.
A sage-and-onion stuffing scaled for a whole suckling pig, with proportions that read heavy to modern eyes. A few conversions and one restraint will bring it into line.
- The sage is the hingeHalf an ounce of powdered dried sage is a very large amount, on the order of five to seven tablespoons of rubbed sage, and assertive by current standards. Start with a tablespoon of rubbed sage and taste the raw mix before binding.
- Weights in cupsFive or six ounces of breadcrumbs is about 2½ to 3 cups of fresh crumbs (roughly half that if you use dry). A quarter pound of butter is 115 g, one US stick.
- Parboiling the onionFive to eight minutes in boiling water, then drained and squeezed dry, takes the raw bite out and stops the stuffing weeping. Sweating the chopped onion in a little of the butter does the same job and tastes better.
- Butter ratio115 g of butter to 3 cups of crumbs makes a rich, loose forcemeat meant to absorb pork fat inside a whole pig. For a smaller roast or a baked dish, cut the butter by a third or it will pool.
- Cayenne'Flavour highly' here probably indicates a noticeable warmth rather than a chilli-level heat. A quarter teaspoon for this quantity is assertive; go further only deliberately.
- BindingOne egg is enough for this volume. The mix should just hold when pressed, not turn to paste — over-bound stuffing sets dense and sliceable rather than crumbly.
- Cooking it safelyStuffing packed into a cavity must reach 74°C/165°F at its centre, which on a large roast usually means overcooking the meat. Bake it in a buttered dish at 180°C/350°F for 30–40 minutes, uncovered for the last 10, and serve alongside.
- YieldAs written this makes roughly 400 g of forcemeat, enough for a modest roast; a whole suckling pig would take considerably more. Halved, it stuffs a loin or a pair of pork chops and serves four to six.
Sage and onion with pork is a long-established pairing in English cookery, and by the time Cassell's was compiled in the later nineteenth century the book treats the mixture as a base to be varied rather than a dish to be argued for. The reasoning was practical as much as culinary: sage is a strongly resinous herb, and it was generally held to cut the richness of fat pork, an idea repeated in English kitchen writing for generations. Roast suckling pig was a set-piece of Victorian entertaining — a whole young animal, skin lacquered crisp, carried in on a dish — and it needed a forcemeat bulky enough to fill a body cavity. The closing note that onions "may be left out altogether" suits the dictionary format: Cassell's was arranged to be consulted rather than read through, and here it leaves the cook a way out.