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Roast Turkey (Prepare and stuff)
Prepare and stuff as in preceding recipe, and lard as described in general directions; place in oven not quite as hot as for roasting meats (if the fire is very hot, lay a piece of brown paper, well greased, over the fowl, to prevent scorching); put a table-spoon of butter in bits on the breast; it will melt and run into the drippingpan, and is used to baste the fowl as roasting progresses; baste often (once in ten minutes), watching the turkey as it begins to brown, very carefully, and turning it occasionally to expose all parts alike to the heat; it should be moist and tender, not in the least scorched, blistered or shriveled, till it is a golden brown all over. For the first two-thirds of the time required for cooking (the rule is twenty minutes to the pound and twenty minutes longer) the basting should keep the surface moistened so that it will not crisp at all; meantime the oven should be kept as close as possible. In basting use the door that opens to the left, so that the right hand may be used conveniently through a small opening; and a long gauntlet glove is a good thing to protect the hand and arm during the operation. In turning the pan, do it as quickly as possible; season with two tea-spoons salt when half done. In the last third of the time allowed for cooking, withdraw the pan partly from the oven (resting the end on a block of wood or a plain stool of the proper height kept for the purpose), and dredge the breast, upper portion and sides thoroughly, by sifting flour over the fowl from a fine sifter, return pan to oven, and let remain until the flour is well browned, then baste freely with drippings from the pan, and flour again, repeating the flouring and browning, and allowing the crust to grow crisper each time; there will probably be time to repeat the process three or four times before finishing. Take care not to wash off the flour by basting; give it time to brown on thoroughly, and do not take out of oven until all the flour of last dredging is thoroughly browned. If it is necessary to turn the turkey in the 1pan, use a towel, and never stick it with a fork, to allow the juice to escape. In roasting a large turkey, a liberal allowance of butter for cooking, including gravy for serving in two successive days, is one tea-cupful, but less may be used, according to taste or necessity for economy. When done the entire surface will be a rich, frothy, brown crust, which breaks off in shells in carving, and makes the most savory of morsels. Dish the turkey.
To make the gravy, boil the heart, liver, gizzard and neck in two quarts of water for two hours, then take them up, chop gizzard, heart and liver, put them back again, thicken with one table-spoon of flour wet with cold water; season with salt and pepper; after the turkey has been taken up, pour into dripping-pan, set on the top of the stove, and boil five minutes, stirring constantly, scraping the sides of the pan until free from the rich, savory particles that adhere. Serve in a gravy-boat.
A late nineteenth-century roasting method built around constant attention: basting every ten minutes, turning the bird by hand, and building a flour crust in successive layers. Most of it still works, but the timing does not.
- The timing rule is the thing to ignoreTwenty minutes per pound plus twenty minutes puts a 14 lb bird in the oven for a full five hours, which will leave the breast dry and stringy. Roast to temperature instead: 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, and 165F at the center of the stuffing before the bird comes out. An unstuffed 14 lb turkey at 325F is generally done in about three to three and three-quarter hours.
- Oven heat"Not quite as hot as for roasting meats" points to something around 325F in a modern oven, though the book gives no temperatures and period roasting heat can only be estimated. Wood-fired ranges swung wildly, which is why the recipe is so insistent on watching and shielding.
- Greased brown paperA loose tent of foil does the same job of blocking radiant heat from the top of the oven. Remove it for the flouring stage or the crust will steam rather than brown.
- Stuffing and food safetyA stuffed bird takes considerably longer and the center of the stuffing must reach 165F. If the stuffing lags behind the thigh, spoon it out and finish it in a dish rather than overcooking the bird waiting for it.
- LardingThreading strips of pork fat through the breast with a larding needle was standard for the birds of the period. Most modern cooks skip it: butter under the skin, or simply the tablespoon on the breast, is usually taken as sufficient.
- A tea-cupful of butterA teacup was conventionally reckoned at about three-quarters of a cup, roughly 6 fl oz, though this page does not define it. Note the recipe allots that quantity across the roasting and two days of gravy, not the bird alone.
- The flour dredgingThis is the distinctive step and the one worth keeping: sifting flour over a hot, buttery surface and letting each layer brown builds the "frothy crust" that shells off under the carving knife. It only works if the flour is allowed to set and color before the next basting, so baste around the crust, not onto it.
- Basting frequencyEvery ten minutes means the oven door is open constantly, which costs more heat than the basting gains. Every twenty to thirty minutes is enough, and the basting matters mainly during the flouring stage.
- Giblet gravyTwo hours at a simmer for the neck, heart and gizzard is right; the liver, which turns grainy and bitter, is better added for the last twenty minutes. Discard the neck bones before chopping. One tablespoon of flour to two quarts of stock gives a very thin gravy by current taste.
- ServingA 12-14 lb turkey serves ten to twelve with leftovers, which fits the recipe's provision of gravy for two successive days.
Buckeye Cookery, compiled in Ohio and first published in 1877, belongs to the era when the cast-iron cookstove had replaced the open hearth but the thermostat was still decades away, and the anxiety of that transition runs all through this entry. Note the practical stagecraft: open the left-hand door so the right hand can reach in, keep a wooden block at the correct height to rest the pan on, wear a long gauntlet glove. This is a cook managing an oven she cannot measure, judging heat by the color of the bird and the behavior of the flour. The dredging-and-browning technique, sometimes called frothing, was standard practice for roast poultry in English and American cookery well before this book and produced the shell-like crust the writer describes with real affection. Turkey itself was a North American bird domesticated in Mesoamerica and carried to Europe in the sixteenth century, returning to New England tables as a festival roast; by the 1870s its association with Thanksgiving was firmly established, and a household manual of this kind could assume its readers would be cooking a large one at least once a year.