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Mushroom Stuffing
3 cups stale bread-crums
2 teaspoons salt
6 tablespoons butter or other
½ teaspoon powdered thyme fat
1 teaspoon minced parsley
½ cup chopped mushrooms
Mix ingredients in the order given.
The ingredient list was set in two narrow columns and has run together in transcription; read it as 3 cups stale bread-crumbs, 6 tablespoons butter or other fat, ½ cup chopped mushrooms, 2 teaspoons salt, ½ teaspoon powdered thyme, and 1 teaspoon minced parsley. "Mix ingredients in the order given" is the whole method, which leaves a good deal unsaid.
- Cook the mushrooms firstRaw chopped mushrooms are roughly 90 percent water and will weep into the crumbs as the stuffing heats, leaving it sodden and grey. Sweat them in the butter until the liquid has come out and evaporated, then combine with the crumbs while still warm.
- Stale bread-crumbsThis means dry crumbs torn or grated from day-old bread, not the fine dried commercial crumbs sold in canisters, which are far denser and will drink up too much fat. Three cups of loose torn crumbs is about 5 to 6 ounces of bread.
- The saltTwo teaspoons for three cups of crumbs is heavy by modern palates, particularly with salted butter and a salted bird. Start with one teaspoon and taste the mixture before it goes in.
- Powdered thymeGround thyme is stronger by volume than the dried leaf most kitchens now stock. If using dried leaf thyme, take about a teaspoon and rub it between your palms as it goes in.
- It is a dry stuffingThere is no egg and no stock here, so the mixture is dry, which suits a stuffing that absorbs juices from the bird or fish. If you are baking it separately in a dish, add half a cup of stock or the mixture will bake to gravel.
- YieldAbout 3 cups, which is enough for a 4 to 5 pound chicken, a pair of small fish, or a boned shoulder. Double it for a turkey.
- Temperature if stuffed inside poultryStuffing packed into a bird must reach 165F at the centre of the cavity, which usually means the breast meat overcooks. Baking the stuffing in a separate dish and basting it with pan juices avoids the problem entirely.
Commercial mushroom growing in caves and cellars expanded in the United States in the late nineteenth century, which put mushrooms within reach of more households than before. The recipe sits in the older English forcemeat tradition, in which bread, suet or butter, herbs and a flavouring element were bound and pressed into whatever was being roasted; here there is neither suet nor egg, and the mixture is loose enough to take oysters, chestnuts or sausage in place of the mushrooms.