Home › The Principles of Cookery › Turkey, Boiled
Turkey, Boiled
There is an old proverb which says that turkey boiled is turkey spoiled, but in this couplet there is more rhyme than reason, as a boiled turkey forms a dainty dish most acceptable to persons with delicate stomachs, who fear the richness of the roasted bird, and also presents an agree-able change to those who during the Christmas festivities are tired of having roasted turkey constantly set before them. A boiled turkey is prepared as follows. Take a plump hen turkey, which has hung for five or six days (weather permitting), pluck, singe, and draw it, fill it with veal or oyster forcemeat, or with chestnuts, truss it for boiling, and remember to draw the legs into the body, and bind it securely with tape. Dredge flour over it, put it into an oval pan with warm water just sufficient to cover it, and put with it a tea-spoonful of salt, a carrot, an onion stuck with four cloves, a dozen peppercorns, a few sticks of celery, and a bunch of parsley. Bring it slowly to the boil, skim the liquor carefully, and let it simmer very gently until the turkey is tender. Take it up, drain it for a moment, serve on a hot dish, pour a little melted butter or white sauce over it, as all the company may not prefer oyster sauce, and send parsley and butter, celery sauce, oyster sauce, chestnut sauce, Dutch sauce, or even good melted butter flavoured with horse-radish, to table with it. A small ham boiled, a red tongue, or even a good cheek of bacon are all suitable accompaniments to boiled turkey, and the dish containing it may be garnished with bacon and sliced tongue, or with sliced lemon and parsley, forcemeat balls, or barberries. Many cooks wrap the turkey in a floured cloth before putting it in to boil, but this spoils the stock, and will be rendered unnecessary if the scum is carefully removed as it rises. Time to simmer gently--a turkey weighing ten pounds, two hours from the time the water reaches the boiling point; fifteen pounds, two hours and a half. Probable cost, 6s. to 12s., excepting at Christmas.
A Victorian alternative to the roast bird, and a genuinely good one — poached turkey stays moist and yields several quarts of excellent stock. A few of the instructions belong to a kitchen with a larder rather than a refrigerator.
- Never let it boilThe hinge of the whole dish is the word "gently". Water at a full boil shreds the breast muscle and squeezes it dry; hold the liquid at 180-185F, where it barely trembles, for the entire cooking time.
- Skip the hanging"Hung for five or six days (weather permitting)" assumes an unheated game larder in December. Buy a fresh bird and keep it refrigerated; whatever the hanging contributed, days at cellar temperature is not a risk worth taking.
- The vesselAn "oval pan" here is presumably a large oval fish kettle or braising pot. Any stockpot that lets the bird sit with water just covering it, as the recipe specifies, will do; if the breast rises above the water, cover the pot so it steams rather than dries.
- Stuffed bird, cooked centreIf you fill the cavity with veal or oyster forcemeat, the stuffing itself must reach 165F, not just the meat around it. Check the centre of the forcemeat as well as the deepest part of the thigh, or cook the forcemeat separately as balls and use chestnuts in the cavity.
- Timings and the thermometerTwo hours for 10 lb and two and a half for 15 lb, counted from the moment the water first boils, is close to modern practice, but go by temperature: 165F in the thigh, away from bone. A 15 lb bird in a domestic pot may take longer simply because the mass of cold water is slow to recover.
- Trussing with tapeCotton tape or butcher's twine, drawn tight, keeps the legs inside the body so the bird holds its shape in the water. Remove it before the turkey goes to the table, not after carving has begun.
- The floured clothThe book is right that wrapping the bird ruins the stock. Skim carefully in the first fifteen minutes instead, and strain the liquor afterwards — it is the base for the celery, oyster or chestnut sauce served alongside.
- Cost and yield"6s. to 12s." is period pricing and tells you only that a turkey was a substantial purchase. A 10 lb boiled hen turkey serves ten to twelve with the ham and tongue garnish; expect a good deal of cold meat afterwards.
The proverb the entry sets out to demolish — "turkey boiled is turkey spoiled" — is described in the recipe itself only as an old saying, and Cassell's rebuttal is a fair statement of the Victorian middle-class case for the dish: a plainer, less "rich" preparation suited to invalids and to households sick of roast bird by the third day of Christmas. Boiled poultry served with a floury white or oyster sauce, flanked by boiled ham or a pressed ox tongue, appears often enough to look like a familiar formal dish of the period, and the pairing of pale poached meat with a pink salted one may have had as much to do with the look of the table as the taste. Oyster sauce belongs to the same era, when oysters are generally said to have been far cheaper than they later became; the note that "all the company may not prefer" it, followed by six alternative sauces, is characteristic of the book's habit of covering every plausible household preference in a single paragraph.