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English Roast Turkey
Kill several days before cooking, prepare in the usual manner, stuff with bread-crumbs (not using the crusts) rubbed fine, moistened with butter and two eggs, seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, sage, thyme or sweet marjoram; sew up, skewer, and place to roast in a rack within a dripping-pan; spread with bits of butter, turn and baste frequently with butter, pepper, salt and water; a few minutes before it is done glaze with the white of an egg; dish the turkey, pour off most of the fat, add the chopped giblets and the water in which they were boiled, thicken with flour and butter rubbed together, stir in the dripping-pan, let boil thoroughly and serve in a gravy-boat. Garnish with fried oysters, and serve with celery-sauce and stewed gooseberries. Choose a turkey weighing from eight to ten pounds. If it becomes too brown, cover with buttered paper. - Mrs. C. T. Carson.
Vegetables used for salads are: boiled asparagus, cabbage, red and white; lettuce, chicory, boiled cauliflower, celery, dandelion, purslane, water-cress, etc. Prepare carefully by freshening in cool water, cleaning thoroughly of all foreign matters, drying carefully in a towel (avoiding as much as possible crushing the leaves, as it causes them to wilt), and then shredding with the fingers instead of cutting or chopping with a knife. Lettuce is often served with the leaves entire, reserving the tender inner leaves of lettuce for garnishing; cover with a "dressing," which consists chiefly of oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and mustard, mixed in various proportions. All the ingredients of the dressing should be the very best.
In preparing the dressing, powder the hard boiled eggs, either in a mortar or by mashing with the back of a silver spoon (if raw eggs are used beat well and strain), add the seasoning, then the oil, a few drops at a time, and, lastly and gradually, the vinegar. Always use the freshest olive salad oil, not the common sweet oil; if it can not be obtained, cream or melted butter is a good substitute and by some considered even more palatable, but when used it should be added last of all. In making chicken salad use the oil off the water in which the chickens were boiled. It is much nicer to pick the meat or cut it with a knife instead of chopping, always removing bits of gristle, fat and skin. The same is true of celery (in place of which celery seed may be used with white cabbage or nice headlettuce, well chopped). To crisp celery, lettuce, cabbage, and all vegetables used for salads, put in ice-water for two hours before serv- (287) ing. Pour the dressing over the chicken and celery, mixed and slightly salted; toss up lightly with a silver fork, turn on a platter, form into an oval mound, garnish the top with slices of cold boiled eggs, and around the bottom with sprigs of celery, and set away in a cold place until needed. Salads should be served the day they are prepared. Vegetable salads should be stirred as little as possible, in order that their freshness may be preserved until they are served. To fringe celery stalks for use as a garnish for salads, meats, chicken, etc., cut the stalks into two-inch pieces; stick several coarse needles into the top of a cork; draw half of the stalk of each piece of celery through the needles several times. When all the fibrous parts are separated, lay the celery in some cold place to curl and crisp. Stir salads with a wooden fork or spoon. Many think turkey makes a nicer salad than chicken. Always make soup of the liquor in which turkey or chicken was boiled.
A plain roast bird with a herbed bread stuffing, an egg-white glaze and a giblet gravy made in the pan. The original gives no oven temperature and no times, so the numbers below are the ones to work from.
- Ignore the first instruction"Kill several days before cooking" refers to hanging a freshly killed bird in a cold larder to let rigor pass. It has no application to a supermarket turkey, and ageing poultry at room temperature is not a safe practice. Start with a fresh or fully thawed bird.
- Oven and timeRoast at 325F in the rack-within-a-dripping-pan the recipe describes. An 8 to 10 lb stuffed bird runs roughly 3 to 3 1/2 hours; go by a thermometer, 165F in the thickest part of the thigh and 165F in the centre of the stuffing.
- Stuffing quantities are left to youThe original gives none. Soft crumb from a day-old loaf with the crusts removed, moistened with butter and bound with two eggs, is all the recipe specifies; scale it to the bird. Because the eggs are raw, the stuffing must reach 165F; packing it loosely helps it get there before the breast dries.
- The basting liquidButter, pepper, salt and water beaten together is a thin emulsion, not a sauce. It keeps the skin from tightening and browning too fast. Baste every 25 to 30 minutes and stop once you begin the glaze.
- Egg-white glazeBrushed on in the last few minutes, as the recipe directs, it sets to a thin, high-shine film. Apply it late, or it scorches.
- Buttered paperA sheet of parchment rubbed with butter, laid over the breast when it colours too early. Foil works, but parchment lets more moisture escape and keeps the skin from steaming.
- GravyThe thickener is beurre manie, equal parts flour and soft butter rubbed to a paste and whisked into the hot pan liquid. Simmer at least two or three minutes after it thickens so the flour loses its raw taste.
- The garnishesCelery sauce is a white sauce with softened celery, and stewed gooseberries fill the sharp-fruit role that cranberry fills in American cooking. Both are worth making; fried oysters around the platter are period showmanship you can skip.
- About the text that followsEverything after "cover with buttered paper" comes from the book's salad section and is not part of Mrs. Carson's turkey.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877) was assembled from recipes contributed by named subscribers, which is why this one carries Mrs. C. T. Carson's signature. What makes the dish 'English' is likely the accompaniments rather than the roasting: celery sauce was a common English partner for turkey and fowl through the nineteenth century, and the stewed gooseberries supply the sharp fruit that cranberry supplies in American cooking. The instruction to kill the bird several days ahead is a reminder that a farmyard turkey came to the kitchen alive, and that a cold cellar or north-facing larder, not an icebox, was the ordinary place to hang it. The 8 to 10 lb bird recommended here is also worth noting -- a good deal smaller than the broad-breasted turkeys bred in the twentieth century.