I have given receipts for some of the most favourite compositions, and a table of materials, a glance at which will enable the ingenious cook to make an infinite variety of combinations: the first column containing the spirit, the second the substance of them.
The poignancy of forcemeat should be proportioned to the savouriness of the viands, to which it is intended to give an additional zest. Some dishes require a very delicately flavoured forcemeat, for others, it must be full and high seasoned. What would be piquante in a turkey, would be insipid with turtle.
Tastes are so different, and the praise the cook receives will depend so much on her pleasing the palate of those she works for, that all her sagacity must be on the alert, to produce the flavours to which her employers are partial. See pages [45] and [46].
Most people have an acquired and peculiar taste in stuffings, &c., and what exactly pleases one, seldom is precisely what another considers the most agreeable: and after all the contrivance of a pains-taking palatician, to combine her “hauts goûts” in the most harmonious proportions,
“The very dish one likes the best,
Is acid, or insipid, to the rest.”
Custom is all in all in matters of taste: it is not that one person is naturally fond of this or that, and another naturally averse to it; but that one is used to it, and another is not.
The consistency of forcemeats is rather a difficult thing to manage; they are almost always either too light or too heavy.
Take care to pound it till perfectly smooth, and that all the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated.
Forcemeat-balls must not be larger than a small nutmeg. If they are for brown sauce, flour and fry them; if for white, put them into boiling water, and boil them for three minutes: the latter are by far the most delicate.