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Aromatic Salt for Boned Goose, Boar's Head, Etc
Take half an ounce each of the following--all ground and sifted: Sage. Thyme. Marjoram. Mace. Cloves. Nutmegs. Bay leaves--and a quarter ounce of Rosemary--and one ounce of White pepper--and mix with 4 pounds of fine salt.
The difference of the two mixtures is in the sage and rosemary. The latter is very aromatic with a taste like a mixture of sage and pine leaves. It seems to have been a great favorite and had many uses in olden times. "Nay, the boar hath rosemaries and bay." "Then the ale, and the cider with rosemary in the bowl were incomparable potations." --Bulwer. "Weave me a garland of holly, Rosemary, laurel and bays; Gravity's nothing but folly Till after the Christmas days." --Old Song.
This is a seasoning blend rather than a dish — the charcutier's sel épicé, kept in a jar and rubbed into large forcemeats and boned birds. The proportions are the whole recipe, so scale rather than improvise.
- Scale it downFour pounds of salt with under five ounces of aromatics makes far more than a home cook will use in a year. A quarter batch — 1 lb (about 1 1/2 cups) fine salt, 1/8 oz (roughly 1 to 2 teaspoons ground) of each herb and spice, about a teaspoon of rosemary, 1/4 oz white pepper — keeps the ratio intact.
- The ratio is the pointSpices come to about 7 percent of the mix by weight. That is what lets you season by the spoonful as if it were plain salt; push the aromatics higher and the blend starts to taste of cloves and mace rather than of seasoned meat.
- "Fine salt"Means finely ground salt, so it disperses evenly and does not settle out. Fine sea salt or plain table salt works; choose one without iodine or anti-caking additives. Kosher flakes are too coarse and will separate from the powder.
- Grind and sift, as instructedSage, thyme, marjoram, bay and rosemary all carry stalk and rib that will not powder. Grind them, then pass everything through a fine sieve and discard what stays behind, or the mix will be gritty and season unevenly.
- Mace and nutmeg are not interchangeableMace is the lacy aril around the nutmeg seed — lighter, more floral, less resinous. The recipe wants both, in equal measure, and substituting nutmeg for the mace flattens the blend.
- "The difference of the two mixtures"The book gives a companion aromatic salt; this one is distinguished by its sage and rosemary. The note is editorial, not an instruction, and nothing further need be added.
- How much to useFor a seasoned salt of this strength, something like 1/4 to 1/3 oz per pound of forcemeat or boned meat puts total salt in the usual 1.5 to 2 percent range. Season a small test patty, cook it, and taste before committing a whole goose.
- StorageAirtight, dark, and cool. The salt keeps indefinitely but the ground herbs fade badly after three or four months, so a small batch made often beats a large one made once.
Aromatic or spiced salt is a working tool of the professional larder — the French sel épicé of garde-manger practice, mixed by the pound so that a cook boning a goose or dressing a galantine could season by weight without measuring eight separate jars. The author's detour into rosemary is Victorian antiquarianism, quoting Bulwer and an old song; rosemary and bay garlanding a boar's head at Christmas is a genuinely old English association, best known from the Boar's Head Carol, and by the time this book was printed the dish survived largely as ceremony.