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Lamb and Veal Stuffing
Three cups stale bread crumbs, three onions chopped fine, one teaspoon salt, one-half teaspoon white pepper, two tablespoons chopped parsley, one-half cup melted suet.
A plain bread stuffing of the sort meant to be packed into a boned shoulder of lamb or a breast of veal. The book gives quantities and nothing else, so the method is left to the cook.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys; it is sold by butchers and some supermarkets, sometimes shredded and dusted with flour. Half a cup melted is about 4 oz by weight. Butter can stand in, though it browns faster and lacks the dry, crumbly set suet gives as it cools.
- Stale bread crumbsThese are soft crumbs from day-old bread torn or rubbed by hand, not dry packaged crumbs. Three cups of dry crumbs would absorb far more fat and moisture than the recipe allows and give a dense, sandy stuffing.
- Three onions is a wide rangeThe recipe gives no size, and onions sold today vary enormously. Two medium onions, roughly 8-10 oz trimmed, suits three cups of crumbs; three large modern onions would swamp it.
- Soften the onions firstRaw chopped onion inside a roast rarely cooks through and can taste harsh and sharp against the lamb. Sweat the onion in the suet over low heat until translucent, then pour fat and onion together over the crumbs.
- No binder, by designThere is no egg and no stock here, so the mixture stays loose and crumbly rather than setting into a sliceable forcemeat. If you want it to hold when the joint is carved, one beaten egg is the usual addition.
- White pepperUsed in pale meats so no black specks show. It tastes mustier and less aromatic than black pepper; half a teaspoon is assertive with this quantity, so start with less if you are not used to it.
- Cooking it safelyStuffing packed into meat must reach 165F at its centre, which often means the joint overshoots. Pack it loosely, or bake the surplus separately in a covered dish at 350F for about 30 minutes.
- YieldRoughly 4 cups once the onion and fat are worked in, enough for a boned shoulder of lamb or a breast of veal of 3 to 4 lb.
Bread, suet, onion and a green herb is the base formula of English stuffing as it comes down through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cookery, varied chiefly by which herb goes in: sage for pork and goose, thyme and lemon for veal. Bride's cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were compiled for young women setting up house, often with no kitchen experience beyond watching. The terseness here is characteristic: the book expects the reader to know that the crumbs are moistened with the fat, seasoned and pressed into the cavity, and spends its words on proportions instead. Suet was the default enrichment in an era when beef fat was cheap, kept well without refrigeration, and was rendered at home from trimmings rather than bought.