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Roast Turkey (Without doubt the most savory)
The turkey is without doubt the most savory and finest flavored of all our domestic fowls, and is justly held in the highest estimation by all good livers. A dressing made of bread crumbs, butter, sweet herbs rubbed fine, moistened with eggs and seasoned with pepper, salt and grated nutmeg. Sausage meat or forced meat made of chicken meat, boiled ham grated fine, chopped oysters, roasted or boiled chestnuts, rubbed fine, stewed mushrooms, or last, but not the least in estimation, a dozen fine truffles, cut into pieces and sauted in the best of butter, and adding part to the stuffing and part to the sauce, which is made from the drippings. (Made into a good, brown gravy by the addition of a cupful of cold water thickened with a little flour, with the giblets boiled and chopped fine in it.) A turkey of ten pounds will require two and a half hours roasting and frequent basting. Currant jelly, Cranberry jelly or Cranberry sauce, should always be on the table with roast turkey.
A nineteenth-century roast turkey written as a paragraph of options rather than a list, with the stuffing left to the cook's discretion. The bones of it still work; what it lacks is an oven temperature and any way of judging doneness beyond the clock.
- No oven temperature is givenThe recipe offers no oven term of any kind, and a bird of this date might as readily have been roasted before the fire as in a closed oven. For a modern oven, 325F is the usual figure for a whole bird; some cooks start at 425F for the first 30 minutes for colour, then drop to 325F for the remainder.
- The clock is not enoughTwo and a half hours for a ten-pound bird is a reasonable estimate at 325F, but roasting times vary with the shape of the bird, whether it is stuffed, and how cold it went into the oven. Take it to 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, away from bone.
- Stuffing inside the birdIf you pack the cavity as directed, the centre of the stuffing must also reach 165F, which usually means the breast overcooks while you wait. Baking the dressing in a separate dish, moistened with some of the pan drippings, avoids the problem.
- Forcemeat and oystersThe oyster and sausage-meat variations are raw going into the stuffing, which is another reason the centre temperature matters. Sausage meat is fresh ground pork, not a cured product.
- "Sweet herbs"In this period the phrase means the mild kitchen herbs: parsley, thyme, marjoram, savory, sometimes sage. Roughly two tablespoons of chopped fresh herbs, or two teaspoons dried, to a quart of breadcrumbs.
- TrufflesA dozen fresh truffles is a luxury few will match. A tablespoon or two of chopped preserved truffle, or a restrained hand with truffle butter added at the end, gets the intent without the expense; heat destroys most of the aroma, so add late.
- The gravyPour off most of the fat, whisk the flour into the remaining fat in the pan rather than into cold water, then add the giblet cooking liquid. The recipe's cup of cold water thickened with flour will lump unless you shake it smooth first.
- Basting and restingFrequent basting does little for moisture but helps the skin brown evenly; every 30 to 40 minutes is plenty. Rest the bird 20 to 30 minutes under loose foil before carving, a step the original omits.
- YieldA ten-pound turkey serves eight to ten, allowing about a pound of raw weight per person; for leftovers, count on more per head.
The confident opening line — turkey as the finest of domestic fowls — was a settled American opinion by the time this book appeared, and the roast bird with giblet gravy and cranberry alongside was already the fixed centre of the Thanksgiving and Christmas table. What is striking is the range of stuffings offered in a single paragraph: plain buttered crumbs at one end, and at the other chestnuts, oysters, stewed mushrooms and a dozen truffles sauteed in butter. That spread tells you the book was written for a wide readership, from plain households to those with a cook and a grocer who could supply truffles. Oyster stuffing in particular was ordinary rather than extravagant in the nineteenth century, when oysters were cheap and shipped inland in barrels; it survives as a regional tradition on the Eastern Seaboard. Cranberry sauce beside the bird is native to the same commercial moment, as cultivated bogs in Massachusetts and New Jersey made the berry a reliable market crop through the second half of the century.