Subjects

Some time in the late nineteenth century, young English lawyer Jonathan Harker travels to the Castle Dracula, located in Transylvania, to finalize a transfer of real estate in England to Count Dracula. En route, Harker enjoys a meal he intends to remember:

I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata". (Mem., get recipe for this also.)

After arriving at a place of great round arches, immense iron-studded stone doors, and rattling chains, Harker soon finds himself imprisoned within the castle and assailed by three seductive female vampires, whom he can barely stave off. The youthful London solicitor also discovers the Count's secret — that is, the Count survives by drinking the blood of human beings — and, now, he is intent on killing Harker. (The rest of the story is well worth reading!)

Irish author James Joyce makes mention of forcemeat in his complex and controversial work, Ulysses:

He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages, polonies [partially cooked meat], black and white. Fifteen multiplied by. The figures whitened in his mind, unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links, packed with forcemeat, fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pigs' blood.