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Boiled Turkey and Fowl
Select a fat, young fowl; prepare the dressing of cracker or bread crumbs, made fine; chop bits of raw salt pork very fine; sift in sage, savory, thyme, or any other sweet herbs you prefer; add to this pepper, salt, and considerable butter; mix with hot water. An egg is sometimes added. After the turkey is stuffed, wrap closely in cloth. Put in cold water to boil, having all parts covered. Boil slowly, removing the scum as it rises. A small turkey will boil in less than two hours. If you use oysters for the dressing, it is better to steam the turkey instead of boiling. When tender, take it up, strain the gravy found in the pan, thicken with flour; stew the oysters intended for the sauce, mix this liquor with the gravy, add butter, salt and pepper to suit the taste; a trifle of cream improves the color.
Boiled Corned Beef. If the piece is very salt, let it soak over night. If young beef and properly corned, this is unnecessary. For boiling, put it in the pot, pour cold water over it after rinsing, letting the meat be well covered. The rule is twenty-five minutes to a pound for boiling meats, but corned beef should never be boiled; it should only simmer, by being placed where the simmering can be uninterrupted from four to six hours, according to the size of the piece. If it is to be served cold, let the meat remain in the liquor until cold. Tough beef can be made tender by letting it remain in the liquor until the next day, and then bringing it to the boiling point just be sering. For rump pieces this is a superior method. A brisket or plate piece may be simmered until the bones can be easily removed; then fold over the brisket piece, forming a square or oblong piece; tie over it a piece of muslin, place sufficient weight on top to press the parts closely together, and set it where it will become cold. This gives a firm, solid piece for cutting from when cold.
Two related recipes run together here: a whole stuffed fowl poached in water, and a long-simmered corned beef. Both hinge on the same principle, which the corned beef entry states outright and the turkey entry leaves implied.
- Never let it boilDespite the titles, both meats want a bare simmer at roughly 180-190F, with the surface barely trembling. A hard boil squeezes moisture from the breast and turns brisket stringy; the corned beef paragraph says so plainly, and the turkey benefits from the same treatment.
- Timing for the bird"Less than two hours" assumes a fowl far smaller than a modern supermarket turkey. Reckon about 20 minutes per pound at a simmer, and check the deepest part of the thigh reads 165F.
- Stuffing inside a simmered birdBecause the cavity heats slowly and the raw salt pork and optional egg are mixed into it, the stuffing is the last thing to come up to temperature. It must reach 165F at the center; if the bird is done and the stuffing is not, scoop it out and finish it in a dish.
- The cloth wrapA close wrap of scalded muslin or cheesecloth, tied at both ends, keeps the skin from tearing and the stuffing from washing out. It also gives you something to lift by. Unbleached cotton only; no fabric softener residue.
- Sweet herbsPeriod shorthand for the mild culinary herbs as opposed to bitter or medicinal ones: sage, savory, thyme, marjoram, parsley. The savory called for is most likely summer savory, which suits poultry dressing.
- Salt pork and seasoningRaw salt pork chopped fine melts through the crumbs as the bird cooks and does much of the salting. Taste before adding more salt, and rinse the pork if it is very heavily cured.
- The oystersStew them only until the edges ruffle, one to two minutes, then lift them out and add them to the finished sauce off the heat. Their liquor carries the flavor; the oysters themselves toughen fast in a gravy kept hot.
- Corned beef, then and nowCommercial corned beef today is generally more moderately salted than home-corned beef, so the overnight soak is often unnecessary, though brands vary and a heavily salted piece still repays soaking or rinsing. Four to six hours of simmering still applies to a whole 4-5 lb brisket; check with a fork rather than a clock.
- Pressing the brisketThe folded, weighted, chilled brisket is a proper technique, not a curiosity. Press it in the refrigerator overnight under a few pounds of weight and it slices cleanly for sandwiches. Keep it cold throughout the pressing.
- YieldA 10 lb fowl with dressing serves 10-12; a 5 lb corned brisket serves 8-10 hot, more when pressed and sliced cold.
Boiling a fowl was standard practice in American kitchens well into the twentieth century, and not a mark of poverty: a bird poached in its cloth stayed pale, moist and tender in a way that a wood range's uneven oven could not guarantee, and it produced a broth that became the sauce. The oyster variant belongs to a period when oysters were cheap and abundant along the Eastern seaboard and turned up in stuffings, sauces and soups on ordinary tables. "Corned" beef takes its name from the coarse grains, or corns, of salt used to cure it, an older sense of "corn" meaning grain or kernel; before refrigeration, salting a brisket or plate piece was simply how beef was kept. That the two recipes run one into the other reflects the logic of a household cookbook of the era, where the cook was managing one pot and one fire.