Giovanni Zenatello
Celebrity
OLD-FASHIONED STUFFING
2 cups hot mashed potatoes 1 1/4 cups soft bread crumbs 1/4 cup chopped fat salt pork 1 finely chopped onion 1/3 cup butter 1 egg 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon sage OU should gently fry the onion until tender in a frying pan in which the pork and butter are melted. Add crumbs, potatoes and beaten egg, mixed well with seasoning.
Yours sincerely,
A potato-based stuffing of the plain sort, printed from a singer's handwritten note and scrambled somewhat in typesetting. The quantities need interpreting before you start.
- The amountsThe butter reads 1/3 cup, and the crumbs and salt carry their whole numbers: 1 1/4 cups soft bread crumbs and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Salt to taste in any case, since the salt pork carries much of it already.
- Fat salt porkSalt pork is cured pork belly or fatback, still sold near the bacon in many markets. Diced blanched pancetta or thick unsmoked bacon substitutes; smoked bacon will change the character noticeably.
- Render before fryingPut the diced pork in the cold pan and let the fat come out over medium-low heat before the butter and onion go in. Dropping it into hot butter leaves you with chewy white cubes in the stuffing.
- Potato textureThe potatoes should be freshly mashed and hot but not wet or whipped. Cold or gluey mash makes a dense, pasty stuffing that will not take up the egg evenly.
- SageA teaspoon of dried rubbed sage is a firm hand for this quantity; if using fresh, chop about a tablespoon. Dried sage from an old jar tastes of dust rather than sage.
- Stuffed birds and the thermometerStuffing packed into a fowl must reach 165F at the centre of the cavity, which usually means the breast overcooks. Baking the stuffing in a buttered dish for 30–40 minutes at 350F, with a little stock or pan fat spooned over, gives a better result on both counts.
- YieldAbout four cups — enough for a 4–5 lb chicken with a little left over, or a rolled veal breast.
Giovanni Zenatello (1876–1949) was the Veronese tenor who sang Pinkerton in the premiere of Madama Butterfly at La Scala in 1904, and who is generally credited with helping to launch the Verona Arena opera festival in 1913. The recipe appears in a collection of dishes solicited from stage and opera performers, a genre of charity and publicity cookbook that thrived in the period — the appeal lay in the signature at the bottom rather than in the cooking, which is why a celebrated Italian tenor is here recommending a thoroughly Anglo-American potato stuffing. Potato-based stuffings, often associated with Irish and northern English kitchens, stretched expensive bread crumbs with something cheaper and held moisture better than crumbs alone; salt pork supplied the fat that a lean roasting bird could not.