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Stuffings or Forcemeat, Dr. Kitchener On

Forcemeat is considered an indispensable accompaniment to most made dishes, and when composed with good taste gives additional spirit and relish to even that "Sovereign of Savouriness"--turtle soup. It is also sent up in patties and for stuffing of veal, game, poultry, etc. The ingredients should be so proportioned that no flavour predominates. To give the same stuffing for veal, hare, etc., argues a poverty of invention; with a little contrivance you may make as great a variety as you have dishes. The poignancy of forcemeat should be proportioned to the savouriness of the viands to which it is intended to give an additional zest. Some dishes require a very delicately-flavoured forcemeat--for others it must be full and highly seasoned. What would be piquant in a turkey would be insipid with turtle. Tastes are so different, and the praise the cook receives will depend so much on her pleasing the palate of those she works for, that all her sagacity must be on the alert to produce the flavours to which her employers are partial. Most people have an acquired and peculiar taste in stuffings, etc., and what exactly pleases one seldom is precisely what another considers the most agreeable, and after all the contrivance of a painstaking palatician to combine her haut gouts in the most exquisite proportions, the very dish one likes the best is acid or insipid to the rest.