To Farse All Things

Source:

England, 16th c.

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Recipe by Daniel Myers

Every now and then I find a recipe that says something like, "make a stuffing and fill the chicken" but doesn't actually say what to make the stuffing out of. This recipe is the opposite. It says how to make the stuffing but doesn't say what to do withit.

The result is a dense stuffing, with a nice balance of herbal notes along with the sweet spicing my family now identifies as "medieval". For testing, I used it to fill butterflied chicken breasts and then wrapped them in bacon.

Ingredients

4 slices white bread, grated to fine crumbs
2 yolks from hard-boiled eggs, ground
1 tsp. dried parsley
1 tsp. hyssop
1/4 tsp. thyme
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. cloves
1/8 tsp. mace
1/8 tsp. ginger
2 eggs
2 Tbsp. butter, softened
1/8 cup currants

Method

Mix all ingredients except currants together to form a thick paste. This can be done by hand, but a mixer or food processor handles it much more quickly. Stir in the currants last.

Use mixture to stuff meat or as a filling for hollowed outvegetables. Make sure to cook it to an internal temperature of 165°F.

Makes about 1 cup of stuffing.

To farse all things.. TAKE a good handfull of tyme, Isope, Parselye, and three or foure yolkes of Egges hard rosted, and choppe them with hearbs small, then take white bread grated and raw egs with sweet butter, a few small Raisons, or Barberies, seasoning it with Pepper, Cloues, Mace, Sinamon and Ginger, woorking it altogether as paste, and the[n] may you stuffe with it what you will.

Published: 2018-04-16