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Turkey, Marinaded and Broiled
Parboil a young turkey, and when cold cut it into neat joints. Bone these, and restore them to their original form. Lay them in a marinade made with four table-spoonfuls of vinegar, four table-spoonfuls of water, two table-spoonfuls of oil, three finely-minced shallots, two tea-spoonfuls of salt, and one of pepper. Let them lie in this twelve hours, and turn them over two or three times that they may be equally seasoned. Drain them, dip them twice in beaten egg and bread-crumbs, and broil over a clear fire. Serve on a hot dish, and garnish with cut lemon and parsley. Send to table with them a sauce prepared as follows. Boil two eggs for ten minutes; put them in cold water for five minutes, and afterwards put the yolks into a mortar with four finely-minced shallots, a tea-spoonful of chopped tarragon-leaves, a tea-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful of dry mustard, and half a tea-spoonful of pepper. Pound the ingredients to a smooth paste, and then add very gradually, first by drops and afterwards by tea-spoonfuls, three table-spoonfuls of salad-oil, two of best vinegar, and one of chilli vinegar. Beat the sauce for a minute or two between every addition, and send it to table in a tureen. Time to broil the joints, about a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, turkey, 6s. to 8s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A two-stage dish: the bird is boiled, boned, marinated overnight, crumbed and finished over fire, with a pounded egg-yolk sauce alongside. Nothing here is difficult, but the recipe assumes a cold larder and a coal grill.
- The hinge: cook it through twiceParboiling leaves the turkey partly cooked, and the broiling stage is what finishes it. Take the joints to 165F at the thickest point; the quarter-hour given is a guide for thin boned pieces over a very hot fire, not a rule.
- ParboilHere it means a genuine gentle simmer in salted water until the bird is nearly but not quite done — for a small turkey a matter of a couple of hours rather than minutes, judged by the flesh rather than the clock — then cooled completely so the flesh firms up for boning. Save the liquid; it is good stock.
- A young turkeyA small bird is wanted here; a modern supermarket bird of 20 lb is the wrong shape for this. Buy an 8-10 lb bird, or simply use thighs and drumsticks, which bone out easily and stay moist.
- Twelve hours in the marinadeThis was done in a cold larder. Refrigerate, covered, and turn the pieces two or three times as directed. The mixture is about a quarter cup vinegar, a quarter cup water and two tablespoons oil — enough for the joints in a close-fitting dish, not a swimming pool.
- Broiling"Broil over a clear fire" means a fire burnt down clear of smoke and flame, coal or charcoal. A gas grill or an oven broiler both work, but the doubled egg-and-crumb coating scorches quickly: keep the pieces four to five inches from the heat and turn often.
- The sauce is a pounded rémouladeThe sauce is a pounded hard-yolk sauce -- Sauces of this kind are thickened by the pounded yolk paste rather than by a raw-yolk emulsion, so they will not behave like mayonnaise. Add the oil and vinegar as slowly as the text insists — a food processor does the pounding, but dribble the liquids in.
- A printer's slipThe sauce lists "a tea-spoonful of salt" twice. One teaspoon is right for the two yolks the recipe calls for; two will make it inedible.
- Chilli vinegarOnce a standard bottle on the sideboard: vinegar steeped with dried red chillies. It is rarely sold now, but is made by leaving a few dried chillies in white wine vinegar for a week. A dash of hot sauce is a rougher substitute.
- Yield and costFive or six people, as stated. The "6s. to 8s." is the price of the whole bird in shillings and has no modern meaning beyond telling you that turkey was then a considerable expense.
Marinading and broiling was a common Victorian answer to a bird that had already been cooked once — the technique belongs to the family of "rechauffés" and devils that fill the back pages of nineteenth-century cookery books, where a large joint was expected to reappear at two or three further meals. The vinegar-and-shallot bath, the double crumbing and the sharp pounded sauce all work in the same direction: to put back the savour that boiling takes out. The sauce is of the older type, built on hard-boiled yolks pounded in a mortar rather than on a raw-yolk emulsion. Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s and reissued for decades afterwards, aimed at households with a cook and a cold larder but a strong interest in what things cost — hence the "probable cost" appended to nearly every entry, which put turkey firmly among the luxuries.