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Turkey, Cold, to Fry
Divide the remains of a cold turkey into neat joints convenient for serving. Dip these into beaten egg, and afterwards into seasoned bread-crumbs, and fry them in hot fat till they are lightly browned. Arrange them neatly on a dish, and pour over them a little good gravy made as follows. Put the bones and trimmings into a saucepan with as much stock or water as will cover them, a bunch of parsley, one or two sticks of celery, and a little pepper and salt. Let them simmer gently for an hour, pour out the liquor, strain and skim it. Mince two ounces of lean ham finely, and brown it gently in a little butter. Dredge some flour over it, and pour to it the strained gravy from the bones. Stew the gravy gently until it is wanted, skim well, and serve very hot. Garnish the dish with toasted sippets and sliced lemon. Time, one hour and a half to make the gravy, five or six minutes to fry the joints of turkey.
A leftover dish that treats cold roast turkey as though it were a cutlet: egg-and-crumb, fry, and cover with a gravy built from the carcass. The gravy is the real work, so start it first.
- Order of workThe gravy takes an hour and a half; the turkey takes five minutes. Get the bones simmering before you touch the meat, and crumb the joints while the stock reduces.
- "Neat joints"On a modern bird this means drumsticks, thighs, wings and the breast cut across into thick slices or fingers. Anything much under half an inch thick will dry out before the crumb colours.
- Frying fat and heatShallow-fry in about half an inch of butter, clarified butter or a neutral oil at roughly 350-375F. The meat is already cooked, so the job is browning the coating; five or six minutes total, turning once, is right.
- Seasoned bread-crumbsDry white crumbs with salt, pepper and a little mace, thyme or lemon zest. Panko works and stays crisper, though it browns faster.
- Dredge some flour over itThis is a small roux made in the pan with the ham and butter. Cook the flour a minute before adding the strained stock or the gravy will taste raw and pasty; about a tablespoon of flour to a cup of liquid gives a light coating sauce.
- Lean hamTwo ounces of prosciutto, speck or an unsmoked cooked ham, minced fine, stands in for the lean ham the recipe calls for. Heavily smoked supermarket ham will dominate the sauce.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread, toasted or fried in butter, tucked round the edge of the dish. Add them at the last moment so they stay crisp under the gravy.
- YieldDepends entirely on how much meat is left: the meat off one leg and thigh will do for two, a whole carcass's worth for perhaps four to six. The recipe fixes no quantity of stock, only enough water to cover the bones, so judge the volume by how much sauce you want.
Cassell's belongs to a generation of English household dictionaries built around the assumption that a large roast was the beginning of several meals rather than one, and its index carries a long run of "cold turkey" entries. Frying egged and crumbed joints was the most direct of these: it gave the dry second-day meat a crisp surface and an excuse for a fresh sauce, and it disguised the fact that the pieces were reheated. The carcass gravy here is the same thrift working twice over, since bones, parsley stalks and celery that would otherwise go out could be turned into stock. Sippets — which dress up a dish or soak up sauce — appear constantly in nineteenth-century English cookery and had largely dropped out of use by the mid-twentieth century, along with the slice of lemon set beside anything fried.