Practical home cookery

In speaking of Christmas dinners a few pages above, I mentioned that an exceedingly nice stuffing for turkeys can be made from chestnuts. As anything in connection with turkeys is very apropos of the present season, I will describe how to make chestnut stuffing and chestnut sauce. For a large turkey, take about sixty chestnuts and slit the skins, and fry them for a short time in a little butter in a frying-pan till their husks come off easily. Then boil the chestnuts in some good strong stock till quite tender ; take one-half and pound it in a mortar, with a little pepper and salt and scraped fat bacon ; stuff a turkey with this and an equal quantity of ordinary veal stuffing or sausagemeat. With regard to the sauce, take the remainder of the chestnuts and mix them with some good strong gravy, rubbing the whole through a wire sieve with a wooden spoon ; a couple of lumps of sugar and a glass of sherry are an improvement. Of course, the best stuffing of all for turkeys is made from truffles, but then they are so expensive, as a rule, that the recipe would not be practical. CHAPTER XVII. There can be no doubt but that the season of Christmas is especially associated with eating and drinking. The most approved English method of exhibiting “ goodwill towards men ” is by asking them to dinner. How many families there are with poor relations, in one respect resembling Christmas itself ; they only come but once a year ! The hallowing influence of this holy season may be seen in all classes. The haughty relax somewhat of their pride, and have what is called quite a family party — often the event of the year to the children of the above-mentioned poor relations. How much more of true enjoyment to the giver is there, however, in this dinner than in some of a different nature during the height of the season ! So gracious and so hallowed is this time that the miser relaxes, though reluctantly, his purse-strings ; the workhousemaster approaches nearer to a man and a brother. The weary and heavy-laden prisoner is, in his fare, reminded once again of the outer world from which he is debarred. And even the hobnailed booted ruffian refrains from kicking his wife on Christmas Day. But the part of Christmas with which we are more especially concerned is the dinner-party. And our endeavour will be to help and advise that large class, the very backbone of English society, whose status may perhaps be best described by saying that they are blessed with neither poverty nor riches. To the really poor, the Christmas dinner is very dependent on the poor man’s friend, the baker’s oven. Early on the day the goose is carried there, prepared often in the somewhat primitive fashion of a heap of sage and onion on one side of the dish, and a pile of potatoes on the other. It is to be hoped that the baker’s man is an honest one. A small piece cut off each joint of meat before baking, on Sunday, too often maintains the man for the week. The poor know to their cost how much meat will shrink in the baking. On Christmas Day the number of geese sent to each baker’s is something extraordinary.