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Chicken Liver Stuffing for Birds
Chop half a pound of fat chicken-livers in small pieces and put them in a fryingpan with two finely-chopped shallots, two ounces of fat ham also chopped, a little thyme, grated nutmeg, pepper, salt, and a small lump of butter. Toss it about over the fire until partly cooked, then take it off and leave until cold. Pound in a mortar, when it is ready for use.
A farce for small game birds — quail, squab, woodcock — in the old French manner: liver cooked only halfway, cooled, then pounded to a paste. The half-cooking is the point, since the stuffing finishes inside the bird.
- The hinge: stop earlyThe livers should be seared and still rosy in the centre when they leave the pan, two to three minutes over fairly brisk heat. Livers taken to full doneness here turn chalky and grainy under the pestle, and they will cook again inside the bird.
- Fat hamAn unsmoked or lightly smoked fatty ham — prosciutto ends, speck, or fatty pancetta all work. Two ounces is about 60 g. Avoid sweet-cured supermarket sandwich ham, which will read as sugary against the liver.
- Unmeasured seasoningOscar gives no quantities for thyme, nutmeg, salt and pepper. For half a pound of livers, start at a scant teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves, a few scrapes of nutmeg, and half a teaspoon of salt, then taste a cooked pinch before it goes into the birds.
- "A small lump of butter"Roughly a tablespoon. It is there to keep the livers from catching, not to make a sauce; the ham fat will render out and do most of the work.
- Mortar or machineA food processor does this in fifteen seconds, but pulse rather than run it, and let the mixture be properly cold first — warm liver whipped in a processor goes pasty and can break. A mortar gives a coarser, more interesting texture if you have the patience.
- YieldEnough for four to six small birds, or one 3 lb chicken. Because the mixture leaves the pan deliberately underdone, treat it as raw: keep it covered and cold, use it within a day, and cook it through in the bird.
- Cooking the stuffed birdBecause the liver goes in undercooked, the stuffing itself must reach 165F/74C, which in a small bird happens at about the same time the meat is done. Check the centre of the cavity with a thermometer rather than judging by the bird alone.
Stuffings built on pounded liver and fat pork are the standard *farce à gratin* of nineteenth-century French kitchens, and this recipe follows that pattern: liver and fat ham part-cooked, cooled, then pounded to a paste. The instruction to pound in a mortar rather than merely chop suits a professional kitchen, where both the mortars and the labour were to hand. Chicken livers rather than the birds' own trimmings would also suit a kitchen buying by the pound rather than working from two quail.