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Fish or Turkey Dressing Without Onions
1/2 loaf stale bread, softened in 1½ cups of hot milk, 1 oz. chopped suet, 1 tsp. dried parsley, 1/4 tsp. marjoram, 1/4 tsp. lemon thyme, 1 egg. Pepper and salt. Steam in double boiler one hour. MRS. JAMES TATTERSALL.
A plain English forcemeat, steamed rather than baked, and meant to be spooned alongside as much as packed into the cavity. The measurements are loose in the way of church-cookbook contributions, so judge by texture.
- Half a loaf, in cupsLoaf sizes varied, so 'half a loaf' is imprecise. Use about 8 oz of stale bread, which crumbles to roughly 4 to 5 cups of loose crumbs; the 1 1/2 cups of hot milk should leave the mass damp and clumping, not soupy.
- An ounce of suetThat is about 2 tablespoons of finely chopped beef suet, which you will likely need to ask a butcher for. Chilled and grated it distributes better; cold unsalted butter, same weight, gives a similar richness with a softer set.
- Lemon thymeA distinct garden variety, not ordinary thyme. If you have none, use 1/4 tsp thyme with a little finely grated lemon zest.
- Dried herbs as writtenThe parsley and marjoram quantities are for dried leaf. If substituting fresh, roughly triple the volume and chop finely, or the dressing turns green and grassy.
- Steaming, not stuffingAn hour in a double boiler cooks this as a savoury pudding in its own basin. Butter the top of the boiler well, cover it, and keep the water at a bare simmer so the egg sets gently rather than curdling into pockets.
- If you bake it insteadThe same mixture holds up in a buttered dish at 350F for 35 to 45 minutes, covered for the first half so it steams before the surface dries. Baked, it will brown; steamed, it stays pale and moist, which is the point with fish.
- Seasoning"Pepper and salt" with no figure means season the milk-soaked crumbs and taste before the egg goes in. Around 3/4 tsp salt for this quantity is a reasonable starting point, less if the suet is salted.
- YieldAbout 4 cups, enough to accompany a large fish or serve six alongside a small bird; a 12 lb turkey would want the recipe doubled at least.
Suet-bound bread forcemeat is a long-established English kitchen preparation still in domestic use in 1900, and steaming it in a basin or double boiler appears to have been a common method when the bird or fish was too small to hold it, or when the cook wanted a moist dressing rather than a browned one. The pointed title matters: onion was so nearly automatic in stuffing that a version without it presumably needed advertising, perhaps for a delicate white fish, for a household that found onion indigestible, or for the sake of a guest who would not eat it s about the whys. The herb list, with lemon thyme named separately from marjoram and parsley, suggests a kitchen garden rather than a grocer's shelf. Philathea cookbooks like this one were compiled by Philathea classes, the young women's branch of the early twentieth-century adult Bible class movement, and sold to raise funds; the recipes come signed, as this one does, because the contributor's name was part of the appeal.