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Pickled Pork Stuffing for Turkeys
Chop up very fine a quarter of a pound of fat and lean salted pork, break quite fine a couple of breakfast cupfuls of bread, and put them over the fire in a fryingpan with two piled up tablespoonfuls of butter, fry to a brown and season with salt, pepper and any sweet herbs, except sage.
A dry, skillet-browned stuffing rather than the wet bread dressings most cooks know. The whole character depends on the pork fat rendering into the crumbs before they toast.
- "Pickled pork"In American kitchens of this period the term covered pork cured in brine — what a market now sells as salt pork, taken from the belly or side with both fat and lean. Unsmoked and unsliced is what you want; bacon brings cure smoke and sugar that will dominate the dish.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup held roughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces, larger than a teacup. Two of them of torn bread is about 2 to 2 1/2 cups of loose crumbs, which is a small quantity — enough for a small bird, and worth roughly doubling for a 14 lb turkey.
- Salt before saltSalt pork carries a great deal of salt into the pan. Taste after frying and before adding any, or soak the diced pork in cold water for 20 minutes and pat dry if it is a heavily cured piece.
- BreadDay-old firm white bread, torn rather than crumbed in a machine, gives the uneven pieces that brown properly. Fresh soft bread and packaged crumbs both turn to paste in the fat.
- Render, then brownThe recipe puts pork, bread and butter into the pan together. Starting the pork alone over medium heat so the fat runs, then adding the butter and bread, tends to give drier, better-browned crumbs.
- No sage, deliberatelyThe text excludes sage without saying why. Thyme, marjoram, summer savory and parsley are the sort of "sweet herbs" meant here.
- If stuffed in the birdPack it loosely and check that the center of the stuffing reaches 165F, not just the thigh. Baked separately in a dish it stays crisper, which suits this style better.
Salt pork was the backbone of the nineteenth-century American larder — cheap, shelf-stable, and present in everything from chowder to baked beans. Oscar Tschirky, who came to the Waldorf in 1893, compiled this book in 1896, and printed more than one turkey stuffing side by side, in the manner of a professional reference rather than a family cookbook. The refusal of sage is worth noting, though the book does not explain it.