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Chestnut Stuffing with Truffles
Remove the dark or outer skins from some chestnuts, immerse in boiling water for a few minntes, remove the light skins, and boil for twenty minutes. Put in a saucepan one pound of fat bacon and two shallots, and keep these over the fire for a few minutes. Then add the whole chestnuts, also one-half pound of chestnuts previously cut into small pieces, put in pepper, spices and salt to taste, and a small quantity of powdered marjoram and thyme. Hold it over the fire a little longer, turning it now and then. It is then ready for use.
A component recipe rather than a finished dish: this is the forcemeat that goes inside a roast turkey, capon or goose. The text is terse even by Oscar's standards, and the truffles of the title never appear in it.
- The missing trufflesThe recipe as printed contains no truffles at all. If you want the dish the title promises, chop an ounce or two of black truffle and fold it in off the heat at the very end, so the aroma is not cooked away.
- Fat baconThis probably means unsmoked fatback or salt pork, diced small and rendered gently, rather than modern breakfast strips. A pound of fat is rich by current taste, though the recipe never says how many whole chestnuts go with it; half the fat still binds the stuffing.
- Peeling chestnutsScore each nut with an X through the shell, boil or roast briefly, then peel shell and inner pellicle together while still hot. Cold chestnuts will not give up the bitter inner skin. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts are an honest substitute and skip the boiling step entirely.
- "A few minntes"A printer's slip for minutes. The blanching is only to loosen the skins; the twenty-minute boil that follows is what cooks the nuts through to a floury, crushable texture.
- Whole and chopped togetherThe two textures are the point. The half pound cut small breaks down and binds, the whole nuts stay intact as pockets of sweetness. Do not process the lot into a paste.
- "Spices"Left undefined in the text; mace, nutmeg or allspice would all be plausible for a stuffing of this kind. Salt with a light hand until the salt pork has rendered and you can taste the fat.
- Yield and useThe recipe gives no quantity for the whole chestnuts, so the yield cannot be pinned down. The mixture goes into the bird only part-cooked and finishes there; take the bird to 165F at the centre of the stuffing, not just in the thigh.
- Baked separatelyIf you would rather not stuff the bird, spread it in a buttered dish, moisten with a few spoonfuls of stock, and bake at 350F for about 30 minutes until the top crisps.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and his 1896 book records the kitchen's French-inflected American cooking. The technique belongs to the French repertoire, where marrons stuff the Christmas turkey and the goose, and where lard gras — plain unsmoked pork fat — carries the seasoning. That the title promises truffles while the text forgets them is one of a number of slips in the book, which also prints "minntes" for minutes.