No. 61

To Prepare Bread Stuffing, American and English Style

Pour Preparer la Farce au Pain a l'Americaine et a l'Anglaise

Bread stuffing is used to stuff poultry and game and sometimes fish. Soak in water or milk a quarter of a pound of bread-crumbs, squeeze out all the liquid and put the bread into a saucepan; beat it up with a spoon and add to it a little boiled milk or broth, so as to form a paste the same as for a panada, remove it from the fire and set it aside to cool, season and mix in five or six tablespoonfuls of chopped-up onions, either raw or cooked in butter, some chopped parsley and three or four raw egg-yolks. Bread stuffing may also be prepared without cooking, only mixing white bread-crumbs with butter or chopped suet, raw egg-yolks, parsley and chopped onions.

American Style.—Steep half a pound of bread-crumbs in milk and when well soaked extract all the liquid; put it over a slow fire in a saucepan and stir up with a spoon, to have it dry; add two ounces of onions, cut in dice, and fried colorless in butter, and when the stuffing is cold, add four ounces either of butter or beef marrow chopped fine, salt, pepper, sage, thyme, parsley, minced green celery leaves and four raw egg-yolks.

English.—Have half a pound of bread-crumbs steeped in white broth and all the liquid extracted; put it on the fire to dry, then add four ounces of beef suet well skinned and chopped up fine: season with salt, pepper, nutmeg and add three ounces of chopped onions fried and lightly colored, one whole egg and four raw egg-yolks.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives three variants on one page: a French panada-based stuffing, an American version enriched with butter or marrow, and an English one bound with suet. The hinge in all of them is drying the soaked bread properly — a wet paste will steam rather than set, and the yolks will scramble into it.

"Bread-crumbs" means fresh crumb"Bread-crumbs" here means fresh crumb -- the soft interior of a loaf, torn or rubbed into crumbs, not the dry sandy product sold in canisters. The method itself implies it: dried commercial crumbs will not soak and squeeze as described, but turn to paste immediately.
The panada stepA panada is a thick bread-and-liquid binding paste. Soak, wring out hard in a cloth, then work it over low heat with a spoon until it pulls away from the pan and no longer looks wet. Cool it completely before the yolks go in.
QuantitiesHalf a pound of crumb is roughly 4 to 5 loosely packed cups from a soft white loaf, though it varies a great deal with the bread. Four ounces of butter is one stick; four ounces of suet or marrow is about ¾ cup chopped.
Beef marrow and suetBoth need a butcher's counter. Marrow bones are common enough; ask for them split. Suet must be the hard kidney fat, with membrane peeled away before chopping -- packaged shredded suet sold for puddings works, though it is usually coated with flour, and an all-vegetable version is sold under the same name.
Herbs are unmeasuredThe American version lists sage, thyme, parsley and celery leaves with no amounts. For half a pound of crumb, start at a teaspoon of dried sage or a tablespoon chopped fresh, half that of thyme, and a generous handful of parsley; sage dominates quickly.
Raw yolks and cooking temperatureFour to five yolks per half pound of crumb is a firm bind, and they are meant to set during roasting. Whatever you stuff must reach 165°F at the center of the stuffing itself, not just in the bird's thigh — pack it loosely so heat can travel, or bake it in a dish alongside.
YieldEach of the half-pound versions makes roughly 4 to 5 cups, enough for a chicken or a pair of game birds with some left over. For a large turkey, double it and expect to bake most of it separately.
The uncooked variantThe brief note about mixing crumbs with butter or chopped suet and raw yolks without any panada gives a looser, lighter stuffing, since the bread is never cooked down into a paste first.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a comprehensive professional reference, and this entry is characteristic of how he handled national styles: one classical French base, then the two Anglophone variants his New York kitchen actually needed to produce. The distinction he draws is real and holds up — the English stuffing leans on beef suet and nutmeg, a line running straight back to the suet-bound forcemeats of eighteenth-century English cookery, while the American version substitutes butter or marrow and brings in sage, thyme and celery leaf, the herb combination that would harden into the standard Thanksgiving flavor profile. The word farce, from the Latin farcire, to stuff, is the same root that gives us both forcemeat and, by a long detour through medieval interpolated texts, farce in the theatrical sense.