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Game Forcemeat
Take any cold cooked game; remove the flesh from the bones, weigh it, and for every pound of meat add four ounces of fat bacon, a little shallot, capers, a few leaves of tarragon and a little lemon peel, all finely mixed. Put some crumbs of bread into a basin with a little milk; when it has absorbed sufficient of it, take it out and squeeze dry, adding it to the mixture with the yolks of three eggs. Sprinkle over pepper to the taste, and mix in the whites of three eggs whipped to a froth. If unsalted bacon is used, very little dry salt must be added.
A stuffing-and-quenelle base built from leftover roast game, in the classic French pattern of meat, fat, panade and egg. The proportions are the useful part; the seasoning is open to interpretation.
- The ratio to rememberOne pound of picked cooked meat to four ounces of fat bacon, plus a bread panade and eggs. That quarter-pound of fat is not optional richness — cooked game is dry and lean, and without it the forcemeat bakes into sawdust.
- Fat baconThis means unsmoked fatback or fresh pork belly, not modern streaky breakfast bacon. Cured green bacon or salt pork will work; if it is smoked, the smoke will dominate the game. Oscar's closing line about unsalted bacon is the clue that he expected a cured product and was adjusting salt around it.
- It is a component, not a finished dishThe mixture as assembled is raw, with uncooked bacon and egg bound into meat that is itself already cooked and cold. It is meant to be stuffed into a boned bird, pressed into a terrine, rolled into quenelles or used to line a raised pie, then cooked through -- modern guidance is around 160-165F internal for a baked forcemeat, or gently poached at around 170-180F for quenelles, never at a rolling boil.
- The panadeStale crumb soaked in milk and wrung out is a binder and a moisture reservoir. Squeeze it firmly; wet panade makes a slack, weeping forcemeat. Figure roughly a cup of soft crumbs and a few tablespoons of milk per pound of meat.
- EggsThree eggs, separated. The recipe gives the egg count only once, after the per-pound ratio, so whether three are meant per pound of meat or for the whole batch is not clear. Three per pound would be generous by modern standards and give a firm, sliceable set; two would suit a softer quenelle. The whipped whites lighten the mixture, but they collapse on standing -- fold them in last and cook the forcemeat the same day.
- ChoppingThe recipe's 'all finely mixed' refers to the shallot, capers, tarragon and lemon peel; in a period kitchen the mixture would have been worked by hand at the chopping board or put through a mincer. A food processor does it in pulses; stop while there is still some texture, and keep everything cold so the bacon fat does not smear.
- Season by tasting a test pattyOscar gives only pepper to taste and, for unsalted bacon, a very little dry salt, which leaves a good deal to the cook. Fry a teaspoon of the mix, taste it, and correct; if the forcemeat is to be served cold it will need noticeably more salt than it seems to when hot.
- YieldA pound of picked game plus its additions makes something over a pound and a half of forcemeat: enough to stuff a large bird or fill a small terrine.
"Forcemeat" is an English form of the French farce, from farcir, to stuff, and the word has meant a pounded, bound meat stuffing in English cookery since the late seventeenth century. Its presence in Oscar Tschirky's 1896 volume fits the economics of a hotel kitchen that roasted game birds to order and had cold trimmings to use up. The formula is deliberately unspecific about the bird -- "any cold cooked game" -- because that was the point. The tarragon, capers and lemon peel supply the acid and herbs that cut strong, slightly livery meat, and whipped whites were a common nineteenth-century lightening trick.