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Forcemeat for Boned Turkey
2 lbs. lean veal 2 lbs. fat pork 2 teaspoons salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 4 egg yolks Chop the veal and pork separately, then pound vigorously in a mortar, add seasonings and yolks one at a time, beating and pounding continually. Cut into strips as long as may be and one-quarter inch square, 1/2 pound of fat pork, red beef tongue, or ham, and loin of veal, or pork tenderloin.
This is a French-style galantine forcemeat: a smooth, pale veal-and-pork farce studded with strips of tongue or ham, packed into a boned turkey so that each slice shows a mosaic. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how the bird gets assembled, so a few things need filling in.
- Keep everything coldThis is the hinge. A 50/50 veal-and-fat-pork emulsion breaks if the fat warms and smears, and the result is a greasy, crumbly farce instead of a sliceable one. Chill the meat, the bowl and the blade, and work in short bursts.
- Mortar to processorThe pounding is to reduce the meats to a paste, not merely to mince them. A food processor does the same job in a minute or two; grind the veal and pork separately as directed, then combine and pulse with the seasonings and yolks added one at a time.
- "Fat pork"Fresh pork fatback or fresh side pork, not salt pork or bacon. If only cured salt pork is available, soak it and cut the added salt accordingly, or the forcemeat will be over-seasoned.
- VealThe recipe specifies only 'lean veal'; shoulder is a usual choice and gives the pale colour. Pork shoulder substitutes without trouble, though the farce will be darker and slightly stronger.
- The stripsThat last sentence is the garnish, not the base: fat pork, red beef tongue or ham, and veal loin or pork tenderloin, cut into quarter-inch batons 'as long as may be'. Whether the half pound applies to each item or to the whole is ambiguous in the text. They are laid lengthwise through the forcemeat so the cut face shows a pattern.
- Seasoning checkTwo teaspoons salt to four pounds of meat is on the light side by modern taste, roughly 0.7 percent. Fry a teaspoon of the mixture, taste it, and adjust before it goes into the turkey.
- YieldAbout four pounds of forcemeat, plus the garnish strips; roughly enough for a boned bird in the 10-to-14-pound range, though the recipe names no size.
- Cooking the stuffed birdBecause the farce contains raw pork and raw yolks, the centre of the forcemeat needs to reach 165F on an instant-read thermometer. A boned, rolled turkey of this size takes considerably longer at the core than the surface suggests; check the middle of the roll, not the meat.
Boning a turkey, filling it with forcemeat and pressing it into a loaf that slices into a patterned mosaic is the galantine of French professional cookery, a set piece of the cold buffet from the nineteenth century into the mid-twentieth. The veal-and-pork farce with strips of tongue and fat is the standard formula, and the tongue is specified as "red" because saltpetre-cured tongue holds a pink colour against the pale meat. Its appearance in a promotional cookbook is a reminder of what those books were: not narrowly focused pamphlets but general household compendia, printed to put a company's brand in the kitchen, and stocked with ambitious set pieces alongside the everyday cooking the products were actually meant for. A recipe like this one assumed a cook with a strong arm and time.