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Turkey-Bone Soup
After a roasted turkey has been served a portion of the meat still adheres to the bones, especially about the neck; "drumsticks" are left, or parts of the wings, and pieces rarely called for at table. If there is three-fourths of a cupful or more left cut off carefully and reserve for force-meat balls. Break the bones apart and with stuffing still adhering to them, put into a soup-kettle with two quarts water, a table-spoon salt, a pod of red pepper broken into pieces, three or four blades of celery cut into half inch pieces, three medium-sized potatoes, and two onions all sliced. If the dinner hour is one o'clock the kettle should be over fire before eight o'clock in the morning; or if the dinner is at six in the evening, it should be on by twelve o'clock. Let it boil slowly but constantly until about half an hour before dinner; lift out bones, skim off fat, strain through colander, return to soup-kettle. There will now be but little more than a quart of the soup. If more than this is desired, add a pint of hot milk or milk and cream together; but it will be very nice without this addition even though a little more water be added. Prepare the forcemeat balls by chopping the scraps of turkey very fine; take half a tea-spoon cracker-crumbs, smoothly rolled, a small salt-spoon of cayenne pepper, about double the quantity of salt, a little grated lemon peel and half a tea-spoon powdered summer-savory or thyme; mix these together and add a raw beaten egg to bind them. Roll mixture into balls about the size of a hickory-nut, and drop into the soup ten minutes before serving. Have ready in tureen a large tablespoon of parsley, cut very fine. Pour in soup, and send to table hot. If force-meat balls are not liked, boil two eggs for half an hour, cut in slices, put them in tureen with the parsley, and pour the soup over them; or slices of bread (not too thick) can be toasted, buttered on both sides, cut into inch squares, and substituted for the sliced eggs.-Mrs. R. N. Hazard, Kirkwood, Mo.
A frugal post-holiday stock recipe with two useful ideas in it: the leftover stuffing goes into the pot as a thickener and seasoning, and the last shreds of meat become forcemeat balls. A few of the quantities need translating before you start.
- The cracker-crumb measure is wrong as printedThe cracker-crumb measure looks too small as printed -- half a teaspoon of crumbs will not bind three-quarters of a cup of chopped turkey, and may be a misprint for a larger measure. If the mixture will not hold together, work in more fine cracker crumbs and add the beaten egg gradually until it just holds a ball.
- Cooking timeThe clock instructions amount to roughly four and a half hours for the one o'clock dinner and five and a half for the six o'clock one. That is generous but not wasted on a turkey carcass, which gives up gelatin slowly; the recipe says to boil slowly, so keep it at a lazy bubble, not a rolling boil, or the stock will cloud.
- A pod of red pepperOne whole dried red chile, seeds and all, broken up. Cayenne pods were the common kitchen sort. A single dried arbol or a small dried cayenne gives about the right heat for two quarts.
- Blades of celeryBlades here means ribs or stalks, not leaves, though the leaves are worth adding too. Three or four ribs cut into half-inch lengths.
- Salt-spoonA salt-spoon is usually reckoned at about a quarter teaspoon, so the forcemeat gets roughly 1/4 teaspoon cayenne and 1/2 teaspoon salt, and rather less than that since the recipe specifies a *small* salt-spoon. Taper the cayenne if the chile pod has already gone into the broth.
- The stuffing in the potBread stuffing left clinging to the bones will disintegrate and thicken the broth slightly. If your stuffing was heavily sage-flavored, it will dominate; scrape most of it off and let the summer savory or thyme in the forcemeat carry the seasoning instead.
- Strain properlyA colander alone leaves grit and small bones. Strain through the colander first, then through a fine sieve or a cloth, and pick over the meat you reserve for the balls with your fingers to catch splinters.
- The half-hour eggsThirty minutes of boiling gives a green-rimmed yolk and a rubbery white. Ten to twelve minutes off the boil, then cooled, slices far more cleanly.
- YieldA little over a quart of finished soup, or closer to three pints with the added milk. That serves four as a first course, not as a supper.
Buckeye Cookery, compiled in Ohio in the 1870s and reprinted for decades, drew heavily on the use of leftovers, and this recipe is a clear expression of that: the bird has already been carved and served, and what remains is the neck, the drumsticks nobody wanted, and the stuffing stuck to the ribs. The forcemeat ball -- finely chopped meat bound with crumbs and egg, seasoned with lemon peel and a dried herb -- is an older English kitchen technique that carried over into nineteenth-century American cookery. The contribution is signed by Mrs. R. N. Hazard of Kirkwood, Missouri; the book was assembled from submissions credited to individual contributors.