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One Onion, Salt, Pepper and Nutmeg
First make the stuffing. Cut up the bacon and cook it, then add the liver cut up, the carrot, herbs, onion, salt, pepper and nutmeg. When well cooked pound all in a mortar and rub through a wire sieve.
This liver farce is now ready for use. Draw and clean the birds, take out the breast-bone and the back-bone but leave the legs. Stuff each bird with the liver farce, tie each one up in a piece of muslin, lay them in a stewpan, cover them over with their bones, chopped vegetables, bay-leaf, thyme, half a pint of stock, and half a gill of sherry. Let them cook steadily for half an hour, then take them out of the stewpan and press them lightly between two dishes. Strain the stock the birds were cooked in, remove the fat, and reduce it to a glaze, take the muslin off the birds and baste each one several times with this glaze to coat them well.
When cold, dish up the birds on chopped aspic jelly with small dressed salad in the centre. do
This is a cold entrée in the late-Victorian style: small birds boned, stuffed with a liver forcemeat, poached in stock, then coated in reduced glaze and served on aspic. The recipe as printed is the method only — the quantities live in the ingredient list that gave the page its odd title.
- The missing ingredient listThe heading "One Onion, Salt, Pepper and Nutmeg" reads as the tail end of an ingredient list that has been separated from its method. The quantities for the bacon, liver, carrot and the number of birds are lost with it; season the farce to taste and judge amounts by the size and number of birds you have.
- What the birds areThe recipe never names the bird; in a period entrée chapter an unnamed small bird would usually be quail, snipe or a small pigeon. Quail are the practical modern choice; poussin will work if you accept a milder flavour and a somewhat longer poach.
- MeasuresHalf a gill is 2½ fl oz. Half a pint of stock in a British book is 10 fl oz, not 8. Both are absorbed into the glaze, so a little either way is not critical.
- The farce must be cooked throughBacon, liver and vegetables are all cooked before pounding, and the mixture goes into the birds already done. Do not shortcut this by stuffing raw liver — the half-hour poach is gentle and the interior of a stuffed bird heats slowly.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding in seconds, but still push the purée through a fine sieve. The sieve is what removes liver membrane and sinew and gives the farce its characteristic smoothness.
- The muslinWrapping and tying keeps a boned bird in shape while it poaches. Cheesecloth or a double layer of butter muslin, wrung out in water first so it clings, does the same job. Tie the ends like a cracker rather than knotting tightly around the bird.
- The hinge: reducing to a glazeEverything depends on the strained cooking liquor reducing to a syrup that sets tacky on a cold spoon. If it stays thin the coating will slide off; if the stock was not gelatinous to begin with, no amount of boiling will fix it, so use a stock made with feet, wings or the birds' own bones.
- Pressing and cooling"Lightly between two dishes" means a plate on top with no more weight than its own — enough to flatten the bird for slicing, not to squeeze out the juices. Chill thoroughly before glazing; warm birds will melt the glaze straight off.
- ServingFour to six birds serve that many as a cold entrée. Chop set aspic with a wet knife on a wet board so it stays glassy, and dress the salad at the last moment — vinegar dulls aspic on contact.
Cold, glazed, boned small birds sat near the top of the professional repertoire in the decades either side of 1900, when a dinner of many courses expected at least one dish that arrived cold and finished, its shine intact. The technique is a scaled-down galantine: bone the bird, replace the frame with forcemeat, poach it in a wrapper so it holds shape, then coat it in its own reduced cooking liquor. "Farce," from the French for stuffing — the same root as the theatrical farce, something inserted — is the standard term in English kitchen books of the period, and a liver farce was ordinary thrift dressed up as technique. Aspic as a garnish, chopped rather than moulded, was the conventional bed for such things; it kept the meat moist under its glaze.