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Galantine of Turkey
Procure a fat young turkey. Bone in the same manner as directed for boned turkey. Turn the legs and wings inside out, and draw them inside the turkey. Bone a young chicken; dredge both with salt and pepper. Put the chicken inside the turkey. Mix one pound of lean ham chopped fine, one cup of fine cracker crumbs and three eggs. Season with herbs; make into a roll and put inside the chicken. Pull the skin of the turkey together and sew up; then form the mass into an even roll. Wrap securely in a cloth and tie. Put the fragments of turkey and chicken in a soup kettle, with one small onion, one carrot sliced, few cloves, a little parsley, thyme and sweet marjoram. Cover with cold water; let it boil gently a short time, and then let it simmer for at least four hours. Remove from the fire and let remain in liquor until it cools; then place on a large dish, put a weight on the top and let it stand all night. In the morning remove the cloth, brush the galantine with beaten egg and cracker crumbs, and put in a hot oven to brown. Let it stand until very cool. Garnish with aspic jelly.
This is a full day's project of the old school: three birds' worth of work, an overnight press, and a browning the next morning. Most of it translates directly, but two instructions need reading carefully before you start.
- The recipe omits the poaching stepAs written, the stock is built from the trimmings but the galantine itself is never explicitly put into it. It must be: the wrapped, tied roll is lowered into the barely simmering broth and cooked there, then left to cool in the liquor. Nothing else in the method would cook it.
- Cook to temperature, not to four hoursFour hours at a simmer is far longer than a boned roll of turkey and chicken needs and will leave it dry and grainy. A roll three to four inches thick is done at 165F in the centre, generally an hour and a half to two hours; the long simmer belongs to the trimmings stock, which can be started first.
- Chill in the refrigerator, not on the sideboardThe direction to "let remain in liquor until it cools" and then weight it and "let it stand all night" was written for a cold larder. Cool the roll in its broth only until it can be handled, then press it under a weight in the refrigerator overnight.
- "A hot oven"425 to 450F, and only long enough to set and colour the egg-and-crumb coating -- ten to fifteen minutes. The galantine is already cooked, and reheating it through defeats the purpose of the pressing.
- Boning the birdsThe recipe refers back to its own directions for boned turkey; the usual method leaves the skin whole as a bag, and the recipe's own instruction to turn the legs and wings inside out and draw them in gives a smooth finished roll. A butcher will do both birds if asked. Keep every bone and scrap -- they are the stock.
- Lean hamThis means firm dry-cured ham, closer to a country ham than to wet-cured supermarket deli ham, which will make the forcemeat soft and very salty. If using modern ham, hold back the salt in the seasoning.
- Herbs and seasoning are unmeasuredFor a pound of ham with crumbs and three eggs, about two tablespoons of mixed chopped parsley, thyme and marjoram is in keeping, plus a good teaspoon of salt and plenty of pepper. Fry a spoonful of the mixture and taste it before it goes inside the bird.
- Cracker crumbsPlain unsalted soda crackers or water biscuits, crushed fine. Dry breadcrumbs work, though they absorb more liquid; add a spoonful of the stock if the forcemeat seems stiff.
- Aspic and yieldThe strained poaching liquor, well reduced and clarified, will set on its own gelatine; chill a spoonful to test, and add softened gelatine if it stays loose. A turkey galantine of this size serves fifteen to twenty in thin cold slices and keeps three or four days refrigerated.
A galantine is a boned bird reassembled around a forcemeat, poached, pressed and served cold in slices -- French in technique and name, the word generally traced to old French galatine or galantine, related to the jellied dishes of medieval cookery rather than to anything "gallant." The nested construction here, ham forcemeat inside a chicken inside a turkey, belongs to the same showpiece tradition as the multi-bird roasts of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century grand cookery, but by the time this book was printed it had become a practical dish for American households with company coming: made a day ahead, sliced cold from the sideboard, garnished with chopped aspic. Its presence in a general household cookbook rather than a chef's manual says a good deal about the period's ambitions -- the recipe seems to assume a middle-class kitchen might bone its own poultry, build its own stock, and clarify its own jelly, and cold pressed meats appear to have figured widely in buffet and picnic service before refrigeration made anything else easy.