“Ellen snared the largest of the geese by a stout pink leg. She bore it to the stump, placed its head between the spikes and cleaved the neck just below the jaw. She threw the beheaded bird from her to flail its wings and flop about. She handed the head to Jack, eager and knowing. “I see you licking your chops.” She tore the down from the breast, stuffing it into a sack. She brought a pail of boiling water, scalded the carcass and finished the plucking. She gave the entrails to the chickens to pick, washed the heavy bird under the pump, hung it near the sausages dangling from the eaves in the shed.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Chop finely breast and meat from second joints of an uncooked chicken, or one pound of uncooked lean veal. Add one-half cup cracker crumbs, hot stock to moisten, salt, pepper, celery salt, cayenne, lemon juice, and one egg slightly beaten. In stuffing boned chicken, stuff body, legs, and wings, being careful that too much stuffing is not used, as an allowance must be made for the swelling of cracker crumbs.
Sources: The passage is from Helga Sandburg, The wheel of earth, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Farmer, The Boston cooking-school cook book of 1896, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — plum cloth, grapes stamp.