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Dressing for Chicken or Beef
Boil potatoes, mash as if for the table, except that they should be less moist, stuff the chicken or roast with this, and bake as ordinarily; for ducks add onions chopped fine; if the bread-dressing is wanted too, it may be laid in the corner of the pan. -Mrs. Carrie Beck.
A one-line potato stuffing of the kind that turns up wherever potatoes were cheaper than bread. It assumes you already know how to mash potatoes and roast a bird, so the useful work is in the details it leaves out.
- Drier than table mashThe whole instruction hinges on "less moist." Steam the boiled potatoes dry in the hot pan for a minute before mashing, and hold back most of the milk or cream. A wet mash will slump into paste inside the bird and never set.
- Seasoning is assumedNothing is listed but potato and, for duck, onion. Season assertively: salt, black pepper, and butter worked into the mash, plus sage, thyme or savory to taste. A beaten egg per pound of potato helps the stuffing hold together, though the original does not call for one.
- QuantityAbout 1 1/2 lb potatoes, mashed, fills a 4-5 lb chicken. Reckon roughly 3/4 cup of stuffing per pound of bird, and pack it loosely so heat can travel through.
- Cooking to temperatureDense potato stuffing insulates the cavity. The original says only to "bake as ordinarily" and gives no temperature; a moderate modern oven, around 350F, is the usual equivalent. Check the centre of the stuffing as well as the thigh; the stuffing must reach 165F, which usually means the bird is done a little past where you would take an unstuffed one. Baking the dressing alongside in the pan avoids the problem entirely.
- Onions for duckChop them fine as directed and sweat them in butter or a spoonful of duck fat first. Raw onion in a potato mash stays crunchy and sharp through a two-hour roast.
- "In the corner of the pan"Bread dressing baked loose beside the bird will scorch on a modern sheet-metal roasting pan. Put it in a small buttered dish, spoon over a little stock or pan drippings, and add it for the last 40 minutes.
- With beefThe title pairs chicken with beef, so "roast" here most likely means a beef roast, and the text does say to stuff it. In practice a potato dressing only holds in a boned or pocketed cut; otherwise bake it in a separate dish under the rack so it catches the fat.
Potato stuffing belongs to the thrift end of the American table: in households that baked their own bread, stale crumbs were the usual filling, and potato filling was a common alternative where potatoes were plentiful. The form is strongly associated with Pennsylvania German cooking, where potato filling remains a fixture at holiday meals. The Dixie Cook Book prints contributions under the names of the women who sent them in - here Mrs. Carrie Beck - which is why the instructions read like one cook talking to another rather than a formal method: mash as you already do, only drier, and put the bread dressing in the corner if you want both.