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Poultry, Forcemeat Of
Take the desired quantity of cold cooked poultry, pound it in a mortar, moisten it with rich white sauce or cream, season it with mixed herbs, and a little mace, white pepper, and cayenne, and work all together until quite smooth.
A stuffing-and-filling paste rather than a dish in itself; the original gives no quantities, so the proportions are yours to set. The point to get right is the moistening — add liquid a spoonful at a time or the forcemeat will slacken past the point of holding a shape.
- Working proportionsFor 8 oz (225 g) of picked cooked meat, start with about 2 tablespoons of sauce or cream and work up to 4. A stuffing for a bird can be softer; a filling for patties, vol-au-vents or croquettes should hold a peak on the spoon.
- Rich white sauceThis means a béchamel made thick — roughly 1 oz butter and 1 oz flour to half a pint (10 fl oz) of milk, or a reduced velouté made with poultry stock. A thin sauce will not bind, and cream alone gives a looser, more delicate result suited to filling rather than stuffing.
- Mortar and processorA food processor does in thirty seconds what the mortar did in ten minutes, but it will turn the meat to paste and then to glue. Pulse the meat first, then add the sauce with the motor running and stop the moment it is smooth.
- Mixed herbsIn a book of this date this means dried sweet herbs — thyme, marjoram, and parsley, sometimes with a little savory or basil. About half a teaspoon of the dried mixture to 8 oz of meat; if using fresh, treble the quantity.
- MaceBlade mace ground fine, or ground mace from a jar. Use a scant quarter-teaspoon per 8 oz. Nutmeg substitutes at about the same quantity but is sweeter and coarser in flavour.
- Skin, fat and sinewPick the meat over carefully first. Cartilage and tendon from the drumsticks will not break down in a processor and shows up as gritty threads in an otherwise smooth forcemeat.
- If it is to be shapedFor quenelles, boudins or anything poached or fried, bind with one beaten egg or two yolks per 8 oz and chill for an hour before shaping. As written, with sauce alone, the mixture is meant to be spooned into a cavity or a case.
- Handling cooked meatThe forcemeat is built from meat that is already cooked and then cooled. Keep it refrigerated and, when it goes into a bird or a pastry case, bring the whole thing to at least 165F (74C) through the centre.
- Yield8 oz of picked meat with its sauce makes about ten fluid ounces of forcemeat — enough to stuff a small chicken, or to fill roughly a dozen patty cases.
Forcemeat exists to turn the remains of yesterday's roast into something that can be served again without apology. The word has nothing to do with force, being generally traced to the French farce, a stuffing, by way of the older English farced meat. It is a component — a base to be varied, pushed into a boned bird, piped into quenelles, spread in a pie, or spooned into pastry cases at a supper table. The mortar and pestle is the giveaway as to how much work it represented; smooth forcemeat meant pounding and then, in the more exacting houses, rubbing the whole thing through a sieve.