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Pork Forcemeat
Take four onions and four apples of medium size, six sage-leaves, a sprig of lemon-thyme, and one of parsley, three or four boiled mashed potatoes, and pepper and salt to taste. Peel and chop the apples, or bake them and use the pulp, which is a better way. Boil the onions with the herbs until done, then strain them, and chop or sieve them; add the apples, with black pepper and a little salt, and enough mashed potatoes to make a smooth mass. Let it cool before using. This is also suitable for geese, ducks, and mutton. Cost, about 9d.
This is a sage-and-onion stuffing built on potato rather than breadcrumbs, which makes it moister and denser than the usual version. Nothing here is difficult; the points worth knowing are about quantities, texture and how you cook it.
- YieldFour onions, four apples and three or four potatoes make a generous quantity — very roughly five cups of forcemeat, enough for a large loin of pork or a goose. Halve it for a duck or a shoulder of mutton.
- Bake the applesThe recipe offers a choice and then tells you which is better. Baked apple pulp is the right answer: halve and core cooking apples such as Bramley, bake at 350F until collapsing, about 40 minutes, and scoop the flesh. Raw chopped apple releases water into the mix and stays in stringy pieces.
- Boil the onions whole"Boil the onions with the herbs until done" most likely means whole peeled onions: the instruction to chop or sieve them only after straining implies they went in uncut. Allow 25 to 35 minutes, until a knife goes through easily. Drain them very thoroughly — trapped water is what makes potato stuffings sodden.
- Lemon-thyme and sageSix sage leaves is a light hand by modern standards; fresh sage varies a great deal in strength, so taste the finished mass and add more. If lemon-thyme is unavailable, use ordinary thyme with a strip of lemon zest boiled alongside the onions and removed before mixing.
- The potatoesUse a floury variety, mashed dry with no milk or butter. The potato is a binder here, not a side dish, and any added liquid will loosen the mixture past the point where it holds a shape.
- Cooling is not optional"Let it cool before using" matters when stuffing meat or poultry. Warm forcemeat packed into a cold bird sits in the danger zone for hours while the joint comes up to temperature.
- Cooking itStuffing inside a goose or a loin needs to reach 165F at the centre, which usually means the meat overcooks first. Baking the forcemeat separately in a shallow dish at 375F for 30 to 40 minutes, until the top is crisp, gives a better result and lets you time both properly.
- Cost, about 9dNine old pence, at twelve pence to the shilling — the sort of figure Cassell's gave so a cook could price a whole dinner against the household book. It signals that this was a cheap, filling stuffing made largely of vegetables.
Sage and onion is a long-established English partner to rich meat, and the pairing with apple follows the same logic as apple sauce beside pork: acid and sweetness against fat. What marks this version as late-Victorian household cookery is the potato. Bread-based forcemeats were standard in earlier books, but by the time Cassell's was compiled the potato was widely available and cheap, and it turns up as a binder in stuffings, fishcakes and rissoles wherever a thrifty cook wanted volume without buying a loaf. The note that the same mixture suits geese, ducks and mutton is characteristic of the book's method: one household could learn a small repertoire and stretch it. That the cost is given at all tells you the intended reader was answerable to a weekly budget.</historyplaceholder>