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Turkey Giblets, with Turnips and Potatoes
Prepare the giblets as above. Take half a pound of streaky bacon, and cut it into convenient-sized pieces. Fry these in a little butter till they are lightly browned. Lift them out, then put in the giblets, and fry them in the same butter. Pour gravy over them, and simmer gently as in the last recipe. Cut three or four large turnips to the shape of corks, and peel six or eight button onions. Put them into boiling water for five minutes, drain and dry them, fry them in one ounce of butter till they are lightly browned, and put them aside. Peel a dozen small potatoes, and trim them neatly. Skim, strain, and thicken the gravy in which the giblets are stewed, and put in with the bacon fried vegetables, soon enough for them to be sufficiently cooked at the same time as the meat. They will require from fifteen minutes to half an hour, according to age and size. Arrange the giblets neatly in the centre of a hot dish, put the vegetables round them, pour the gravy over, and serve very hot. The wings only of turkeys are often stewed in this way. Time, one hour and a half. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A giblet stew built as a garnished ragoût, with the vegetables cut to matching shapes and added late so everything finishes together. The one thing to get right is holding back the liver.
- What "giblets" means hereIn Victorian usage turkey giblets meant the neck, gizzard, heart, liver, wing tips and often the feet — not the small bagged set of neck and organs sold with a modern bird. A modern bagged set will not stretch to three or four people; you will need to make the quantity up from extra necks and wings, or use the wings alone as the recipe itself suggests. Ask a butcher for turkey necks and wings; both are cheap and take long stewing well.
- Keep the liver outGizzard, neck and wings need an hour and a half of gentle simmering; liver is ready in three or four minutes and turns granular and bitter if stewed. Fry it separately at the end and lay it on the dish with the rest.
- "Prepare the giblets as above"The standard preparation of the period was scalding and skinning the feet, splitting the gizzard and cleaning out its gritty inner sac, and cutting the neck into two or three lengths. All of it should be well washed and dried before frying, or it will not brown.
- GravyThe "gravy" of this period is a brown stock, not a finished sauce. Use about a pint of dark poultry or beef stock — enough to barely cover the giblets — and thicken at the end with a small kneaded butter-and-flour paste or a spoonful of roux.
- Streaky baconStreaky is what Americans call regular sliced bacon, but cut from a piece rather than pre-sliced if you can, so you get lardons about half an inch thick. Modern bacon is generally wetter than Victorian dry-cured bacon, so taste before adding any salt to the gravy.
- Turnips "to the shape of corks"Barrel-shaped pieces roughly an inch long, pared with a small knife — the technique now called turning. Cut them a touch larger than the button onions so the two cook at the same rate.
- Blanching and browningFive minutes in boiling water takes the raw edge off the turnips and loosens the onion skins; drying them properly afterwards is what lets them brown rather than steam in the butter.
- Timing the vegetablesAdd the browned turnips, onions and the raw potatoes to the thickened gravy for the last fifteen to thirty minutes, as the recipe directs, according to their age and size. Small waxy potatoes hold their trimmed shape; floury varieties will collapse into the sauce.
- YieldAs written it serves three or four as a main course with bread. Turkey neck and wing meat is gelatinous and rich, so a plain green vegetable alongside is welcome.
Giblet dishes belong to a kitchen in which nothing from a bird was thrown away, and to a period when a whole turkey was drawn at home rather than arriving oven-ready. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, a late-Victorian household compendium running to thousands of entries, gives giblets their own sequence of recipes — pies, soups, stews — precisely because a Christmas turkey left a substantial pile of neck, gizzard, feet and wing tips once the bird itself was trussed. The treatment here is French in method rather than English: bacon fried out first, meat browned in the fat, a brown stock added, and the vegetables turned to uniform shapes and glazed separately before being returned to the pot, which is essentially the construction of a rago u00fbt with a garnish. That the book offers the wings on their own as an alternative reflects a practical truth still worth acting on — the working parts of a bird, slow-cooked, are better eating than the breast.