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Forcemeat
1/2 pound lean beef 1/2 pound suet 1/2 cup fine bread crumbs 1/4 teaspoon sweet marjoram 1 egg 1/4 teaspoon sweet basil 1/4 teaspoon thyme 1/2 teaspoon chopped parsley Salt and pepper Chop the beef and suet very fine; add the crumbs and seasonings; mix well and add the beaten egg.
A plain butcher's forcemeat — a stuffing base meant to be cooked inside or alongside poultry and game, never eaten as mixed. A few of the quantities need reading with care.
- Equal weights of beef and suetThe printed page gives 1/2 pound suet, as our text now reads. That makes equal weights of lean beef and suet, the usual ratio in forcemeat of the period.
- SuetBeef kidney suet, the hard fat from around the kidneys, is the intended fat. Most supermarkets no longer stock it loose; ask a butcher, or use shredded packaged suet where sold. Chilled hard, it grates and chops far more cleanly than at room temperature.
- ChoppingHand-chopping fine is the traditional method and gives a better texture than mincing. A food processor works if you pulse the well-chilled beef and suet separately and briefly — run it continuously and the fat smears rather than staying in distinct flecks.
- Sweet marjoram and sweet basilBoth are the ordinary garden herbs; "sweet" simply distinguishes them from wild marjoram (oregano) and from the coarser basils. Quarter-teaspoon measures this small most likely assume dried herbs; if using fresh, roughly treble the amount.
- The eggOne egg is the only binder here. Beat it in last, as directed, and mix just enough to bring the forcemeat together; overworking makes it dense and rubbery once cooked.
- Cooking itThis is raw beef with a raw egg in it. Whether stuffed into a bird, rolled into balls and fried, or poached, the centre must reach 165F. Stuffing packed loosely inside poultry heats slowly — check the stuffing temperature, not just the meat.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/4 pounds of forcemeat with the corrected suet, enough to stuff a chicken of 4-5 lb generously, or to make something like two dozen small forcemeat balls.
- SeasoningThe salt and pepper are unquantified. Around 1 teaspoon salt per pound of mixture is a reasonable starting point; fry a small pinch to taste before committing the batch.
Forcemeat comes from the French farce, a stuffing, by way of the older English verb "to farce" — to fill — with the "force" spelling appearing later as a variant. Recipes of this kind sit in the poultry and game chapters of English and American cookbooks for generations, because a lean roast bird needed both fat and bulk: the suet basted the meat from inside, the crumbs and egg held the mass together, and the herbs — marjoram, basil, thyme, parsley — were kitchen-garden plants rather than anything exotic. The same mixture served several purposes in one household, which is why the instructions stop at "mix well": it might be spooned into a fowl, rolled into balls and fried as a garnish for game, or used to line a raised pie.