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Stuffing for Sucking Pigs (Onion salt white pepper nutmeg)
onion, salt, white pepper, nutmeg, mace, pennyroyal, parsley, and lemon thyme finely shred; beat as many fresh eggs, yolks and whites separately, as will make the above ingredients into a moist paste; roll into small balls, and fry them in fresh lard, putting them in just as it boils up. When of a light brown, take them out and drain before the fire. If the suet is moist or stale, a great many more eggs will be necessary. Forcemeat balls made in this way are remarkably light; but being somewhat greasy, some people prefer them with less suct and eggs.
A Georgian-style forcemeat: the herbs and aromatics are bound with suet and beaten egg, rolled into balls and fried, then served round a roast sucking pig rather than packed inside it. The quantities in the surviving text are left to the cook, so treat the proportions as a matter of judgement.
- Pennyroyal — leave it outPennyroyal (Mentha pulegium) was a standard English pork herb into the nineteenth century, but it contains pulegone, which is hepatotoxic and a known abortifacient; it is no longer sold as a culinary herb and should not be eaten, particularly by anyone pregnant. Spearmint or a little extra lemon thyme gives the same bright, resinous lift against fatty pork.
- Working proportionsThe surviving text gives no quantities, and names no breadcrumbs: the binding is suet and egg. If you want a starting point, reckon on about 4 oz finely shredded beef suet, one small onion, and roughly a tablespoon each of the chopped herbs. Two eggs will usually bind that; add a third only if the mixture will not hold a ball.
- Suet"Fresh" suet means the hard fat from around the kidneys, shredded fine; the packaged shredded suet sold for puddings is the nearest modern substitute, though it is usually dusted with flour. The recipe's own note that moist or stale suet demands more egg is its observation, and worth following.
- Beating yolks and whites apartThe recipe specifies this, and boasts that the balls are remarkably light. Beating the whites to a soft foam and folding them in is the usual way to take advantage of it; the recipe does not say at what point they go in.
- Mace and nutmegBoth come from the same fruit — mace is the lacy aril, nutmeg the seed — and mace is the sharper, more peppery of the two. A blade of mace ground fresh, or about a quarter teaspoon of the powder, is enough for the quantity above.
- Frying temperature"Just as it boils up" means the lard is hot and beginning to move; in modern terms that is somewhere around 350F, though the book gives no temperature. Cooler and the balls drink fat and collapse; much hotter and the outside browns before the egg inside sets.
- Draining"Drain before the fire" was a way of keeping them hot while the grease ran off. A wire rack over a tray in a 200F oven does the same thing; paper alone will steam the crust soft.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities or yield. Shaped walnut-sized, the balls were arranged round the dish as a garnish. They can be shaped ahead and refrigerated, but fry them at the last moment.