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Potato Stuffing
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning salt and pepper 1 cup cooked sausages cut in pieces Cook the onion and the pork until yellow; add remaining ingredients. Use for stuffing chicken, turkey, and goose.
A plain New England-style bread-free stuffing built on mashed potato, aromatics rendered in pork fat, and cooked sausage. The surviving text gives the method clearly even where the opening quantities are thin.
- What the base should beThe opening of the ingredient list is missing, so the potato, onion and pork quantities are lost. A workable reconstruction is roughly 4 cups hot mashed or riced potato to 1 chopped onion and 2-3 oz diced salt pork or bacon. Mashing the potato without milk will help keep the stuffing from going pasty in the bird.
- "Cook until yellow"This means softened and just beginning to colour, not browned. Render the pork slowly over medium-low heat until the fat runs, then add the onion and cook 5-8 minutes.
- Poultry seasoningBlends of the period were generally sage-forward, commonly with thyme and often marjoram or savoury. A teaspoon of modern poultry seasoning is a reasonable substitute; sage-forward blends can overwhelm potato, so taste the mixture before it goes near the bird.
- Cooked sausagesSausage meat here is pre-cooked and cut up, not raw. Brown the sausage first, drain it, and slice into rough half-inch pieces so it stays distinct in the soft potato.
- Stuffing the birdFill the cavity loosely and only just before roasting. Any stuffing packed into poultry has to reach 165F at its centre, which usually means the breast overcooks first; baking the stuffing in a buttered dish for 30-40 minutes at 350F avoids the problem entirely.
- YieldOn the reconstructed quantities above, the batch would fill a 4-5 lb chicken with a little over; roughly double for a 12-14 lb turkey or a goose. The original quantities are missing, so this is an estimate only.
- Goose in particularGoose renders a great deal of fat into the cavity and potato absorbs it readily, which may account for the pairing. Drain the bird partway through roasting or the stuffing turns greasy.
Potato stuffing is best documented on the Pennsylvania German table, where potatoes were cheaper and more reliably to hand than good stale bread, and it is still used there for roast goose and duck; a similar habit is reported in parts of northern New England. Its logic is often said to be the same as bread stuffing's: a bland starch to catch the fat and juices of a rich bird, sharpened with onion, salt pork and sage. Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston as a promotional volume for its chocolate, but nonetheless carried a full general cookery section, and its meat chapter reflects turn-of-the-century Boston household practice, in which salt pork was a common cooking fat and packaged "poultry seasoning" was by then available ready-mixed.