Home › Poultry › English Roast Turkey

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.