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Sausage-Meat Stuffing
Take equal weights of lean and fat pork. Mince finely, first separately and afterwards together, and mix with them a third of their weight in finely-grated bread-crumbs. Season the mixture with pepper, salt, and pounded mace, and bind it together with yolk of egg. When the ingredients are thoroughly blended, the forcemeat is ready for use. If liked, a little powdered mace and a small proportion of chopped sage can be added to the preparation. Probable cost, one pound of stuffing, 1s. Sufficient for a moderate-sized turkey.
A plain pork forcemeat of the sort Victorian cooks kept in the repertoire for turkey, goose and veal. The proportions are sound; the only real translation needed is the pork itself and the modern rules about stuffing a bird.
- The fat is the pointEqual weights of lean and fat pork gives roughly a 50/50 mixture, far richer than modern sausage meat, which runs about 20-30 per cent fat. Buy pork shoulder and a piece of back fat separately, or ask a butcher for coarse sausage meat and accept a leaner, drier result.
- Mince separately, then togetherThis is not fussiness. Grinding the fat on its own keeps it from smearing and warming against the lean, and the second pass through combines them evenly. Keep everything cold; warm fat turns the mixture greasy and it will render out in the oven.
- BreadcrumbsA third of the meat's weight in crumbs, so about 5 oz (150 g) crumbs to 1 lb (450 g) pork. "Finely grated" means fresh crumbs from a day-old loaf, not the dry sandy kind sold for coating; dried crumbs will absorb more moisture and stiffen the stuffing.
- MaceMace is the lacy aril around the nutmeg, warmer and less sweet than nutmeg itself. "Pounded" means broken from blade mace in a mortar. Ground mace from a jar works; start with about half a teaspoon per pound and note that the recipe then oddly offers powdered mace again as an option, so one addition is enough.
- BindingOne yolk per pound is ample. Add it last and mix only until the forcemeat holds together when squeezed; overworking pork forcemeat makes it bouncy and close-textured rather than crumbly.
- Cooking it safelyPork stuffing inside a turkey must reach 165F (74C) at the centre of the stuffing, not just in the bird's thigh, and the cavity should be filled loosely. Baking the forcemeat separately in a dish at 375F (190C) for about 40 minutes is more reliable and gives better browning.
- QuantityWhat counted as a 'moderate-sized turkey' is not defined here, and period birds varied a good deal in size. For a modern 12-14 lb bird, allow 2 to 2.5 lb of this mixture; the pound quoted here would suit a chicken or a small capon.
- The costing'Probable cost, one pound of stuffing, 1s' is an estimate of what the ingredients would come to, given in the shillings and pence of the book's own day. It carries no useful modern equivalent.
The word forcemeat comes from farce, French for stuffing, and has nothing to do with force; the same root gives us farci and farcie on menus. Sage with pork is an old English pairing, often traced to sage's reputation as an aid to digesting fatty meat, and the fact that it is offered here rather than insisted upon fits the pattern by which sage-and-onion was the usual stuffing for goose and pork, while turkey was more often given a plain or chestnut forcemeat. Giving a probable cost is characteristic of Victorian household manuals, written for a mistress who ordered the food and settled the bills but did not necessarily do the mincing.