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Rice Stuffing for Fowls
Brown one chopped onion in a tablespoon of butter and mix with it four cups of cold boiled rice and one cup of bread crumbs moistened in one cup of milk. Season with sage, parsley or other sweet herbs, as desired. Add half a pound of sausage meat and salt and pepper to taste.
A generous, loose stuffing built on cold cooked rice rather than bread alone — enough for a large bird, and easily baked on its own.
- YieldFour cups of cooked rice plus a cup of crumbs and half a pound of sausage comes to roughly 6-7 cups of stuffing. That is enough for a bird of about ten pounds, or a pair of roasting chickens with some left over.
- Cold boiled riceThe recipe assumes yesterday's rice, which is drier and holds its grain. Freshly cooked rice will turn the mixture pasty; spread it on a tray and chill it first if you are cooking rice specially. Long-grain works better here than short.
- The sausage is rawSausage meat means bulk fresh pork sausage, uncooked. Stuffed inside a bird, the centre of the stuffing must reach 165F on a thermometer, which usually means the bird itself overshoots. Browning the sausage before mixing, or baking the stuffing separately in a dish, avoids the problem.
- Baked separatelyIn a buttered dish, cover and bake at 350F for about 40 minutes, then uncover for 10-15 to crisp the top. Add a little stock if it looks dry — the rice absorbs more than bread does.
- Sweet herbsThe period term for the mild culinary herbs: sage, thyme, marjoram, savory, parsley. Sage and pork is the intended pairing; a teaspoon of dried rubbed sage or a tablespoon of chopped fresh is about right for this quantity.
- Bread crumbsSoft crumbs torn from day-old bread, not the dry sandy kind sold in canisters. Dry crumbs will drink the milk and leave the mixture stiff; use half the quantity, or add milk until the crumbs are simply moist.
- SeasoningCommercial sausage meat is already salted, so taste before adding more. Fry a teaspoon of the finished mixture in the same pan to check the seasoning before it goes near the bird.
Rice stuffings turn up throughout nineteenth-century American cookery and are often associated with the South and with Charleston in particular, where rice was the staple crop and cooks are said to have used it where a New England kitchen would have reached for bread. The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the pattern company's publishing arm, aimed at the same middle-class housekeepers who bought its dress patterns and read The Delineator. The addition of half a pound of sausage meat is the practical heart of it: rice contributes almost no fat, and a bird's cavity needs the fat and salt that pork brings if the stuffing is not to bake into a dry mass. Recipes of this kind also quietly assume leftovers in a household that boiled rice as a side dish, and using it up in a stuffing was ordinary economy rather than a technique worth explaining.