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Onion and Sage Stuffing for Goose, Duck, or Pork
Wash, peel, and parboil three large onions. If a strong flavour of onions is liked, the boiling can be omitted, and the onions used raw; if it is objected to, they may be boiled in one or two waters. Drain the onions, mince them finely, and mix with them an equal quantity of bread-crumbs, an ounce of butter, a small tea-spoonful of powdered sage, a tea-spoonful of salt, and half a tea-spoonful of pepper. Mix all the ingredients thoroughly. The yolk of an egg is sometimes added, but it is oftener omitted. Spanish onions are always to be preferred to the ordinary ones for stuffing. Time to boil the onions, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for half a dozen persons.
A plain forcemeat that has barely changed in two centuries: onion, bread, butter, sage. The variables the original leaves open — how strongly the onion reads, and how the stuffing is cooked — are the ones worth deciding in advance.
- The hinge: how much you boil the onionsTwenty minutes of parboiling, or two changes of water, produces a mild, sweet stuffing; raw onion gives a sharp, aggressive one that mellows only partly in the roasting. For a fatty bird like goose, a single parboil is the useful middle ground — enough bite to cut the fat, not enough to dominate.
- Spanish onionsThen as now, a large mild onion. Three large ones give roughly 1-1 1/2 lb / 450-700 g peeled, which is a generous quantity - halve it if you are stuffing a duck rather than a goose.
- "An equal quantity of bread-crumbs"The original does not say whether this is by weight or by volume. Use stale white bread crumbed coarsely, not the fine dry crumbs sold for coating; dry crumbs will drink the onion juice and set solid.
- Powdered sageVictorian powdered sage was dried and milled to a dust, stronger by volume than modern rubbed sage. A small teaspoon of the powdered kind corresponds to about a tablespoon of chopped fresh sage. Add half, taste a fried spoonful, then adjust.
- SeasoningA full teaspoon of salt to this quantity is correct for a stuffing that seasons rich meat from the inside, but check it against your bird if it has already been salted.
- The egg yolkPurely a binder. Leave it out and the stuffing stays loose and crumbly, which suits goose; include it if you want to shape the mixture into balls and roast them separately.
- Cooked in the bird, or alongsideStuffing packed into a goose or duck absorbs rendering fat and must reach 165F/74C at its centre, which usually means overcooking the breast. Baking it in a dish for 30-40 minutes at 375F/190C, basted with a few spoonfuls of the roasting fat, is the more reliable route.
- Yield and costEnough for six, as stated. The "probable cost, 6d" is a Victorian housekeeping figure and has no modern equivalent worth calculating.
Sage and onion is the English stuffing for fatty roast meats, and the pairing is functional rather than decorative: the volatile oils in sage and the sharpness of onion both cut through goose and pork fat, and sage was long held to aid the digestion of rich food — a belief that survives in the herb's name, from Latin salvia. The preference for Spanish onions is a note of its period: large, mild imported onions were a step up from ordinary English keepers, and specifying them marks this as a recipe for a household that could shop rather than simply use what was in the store.