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Forcemeat of Suet
Chop as finely as possible one ounce of suet, and mix with it a dessert-spoonful of chopped parsley, and the chopped rind of half a lemon. Add to them two ounces of bread-crumbs, a tea-spoonful of dried sweet herbs, and a seasoning of pepper and salt, and mix all together. Beat and strain one egg, moisten the forcemeat with it, and mix well. This is suitable for a boned and rolled joint.
A plain 19th-century stuffing built on raw suet rather than butter, meant to be rolled inside a boned joint where it can baste the meat from within. The quantities are small — this is a single portion's worth of forcemeat by modern standards.
- Scale it upAs written this makes only about 3 oz of dry mixture, nearer 5 oz once the egg is in, enough for a very small rolled joint. For a boned shoulder of lamb or a rolled breast of veal, treble or quadruple the whole list.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold by butchers and, in the UK, as pre-shredded packets (Atora and similar). Shredded suet needs no chopping; if using a fresh piece, chill it hard first and it will chop cleanly instead of smearing.
- Vegetarian suetPalm-oil based shredded suet works here mechanically, but it melts at a lower temperature and the forcemeat will be looser. Cold grated butter is a closer substitute in behaviour.
- "Chopped rind of half a lemon"This means the zest only, pared thin and then chopped fine — a modern microplane does the job in seconds. Any white pith carried over will turn the stuffing bitter.
- Bread-crumbsThe recipe does not specify, but fine dry white crumbs suit this better than coarse fresh ones. Two ounces is about 1/2 cup of dried crumbs, and they need to be dry enough to absorb the egg without going pasty.
- Dried sweet herbs'Sweet herbs' in this period usually meant some combination of thyme, marjoram, savory and sometimes a little sage. A teaspoon of dried mixed herbs covers it; go light on sage, which dominates quickly in this quantity.
- The eggOne beaten and strained egg may be more liquid than 2 oz of crumbs will take, and the recipe says only to moisten the forcemeat with it. Add it a little at a time and stop when the mixture just holds together when squeezed — a sodden forcemeat will leak out of the joint.
- CookingThe forcemeat only cooks as the joint cooks, so it must not be left uncooked in the centre of a rare roast. Check that the middle of the roll reaches 165F/74C, since it contains raw egg.
Suet forcemeats sit at the older end of British stuffing practice: hard beef kidney fat was often used as a binder for anything that had to hold together and lard the meat around it as it roasted, though butter-bound forcemeats ran alongside suet ones throughout the period. A Victorian cook was expected to learn forcemeat as a technique — a fat, a starch, an aromatic and an egg to bind — and then vary it endlessly by trade: veal and ham forcemeat for game, oyster forcemeat for boiled fowl, this plainer suet version for a boned and rolled joint. The lemon rind and parsley combination is the standard English seasoning of the period for meat forcemeats, and something close to it survives in the stuffings still made for rolled breast of lamb and veal.