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TURKEY, ROAST (another way)
Take a well-kept but perfectly sweet young hen turkey. Pluck, draw, and singe it carefully, wipe the outside with a damp cloth, wash the inside, and dry it well. Fill with onion forcemeat, truss securely for roasting, and put it down to a clear fire. Baste liberally, and when it is done enough dish it, and pour over it some tomato or truffle sauce. Serve very hot. The onion stuffing may be made as follows. Skin half a dozen large onions, throw them into boiling water, and boil them for a quarter of an hour. Drain and mince them, and put them into a stewpan with a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, three moderate-sized truffles thinly sliced, the crumb of two state rolls which have been soaked in milk and afterwards squeezed till dry, a table-spoonful of shredded parsley, the yolks of three eggs, and a little pepper, salt, and powdered mace. Beat these ingredients thoroughly over a gentle fire until they form a smooth compact mass, and the forcemeat will be ready for use. Time to roast a small turkey, an hour and a half; a large turkey, two hours and a half. Probable cost, 8s. to 14s. Sufficient, a moderate-sized turkey for six or seven persons.
A straightforward roast bird whose interest lies in the stuffing; the roasting times, written for an open fire and a smaller old-fashioned turkey, are the part that needs rethinking.
- The timings will not doAn hour and a half for a stuffed turkey assumes a smaller bird than most sold today and a mode of cooking (an open fire, the bird turned before it) that behaves quite differently from a closed oven. Roast at 350F and go by a thermometer: 165F in the thickest part of the thigh and, critically, 165F in the centre of the stuffing, which lags well behind the meat.
- Stuffing inside or outBecause this forcemeat is egg-bound and dense, it heats slowly and is the limiting factor on the whole roast. Cooking it in a separate buttered dish for 30-40 minutes gives a better bird and a safer stuffing; the cavity can hold an onion and a few herbs instead.
- "State rolls"A printer's slip for stale rolls. Use about 2 cups of torn crumb from a plain white loaf a day or two old, soaked in milk and squeezed dry.
- A clear fireMeaning a fire burnt down to glowing coals with no smoke or flame, in front of which the bird turned on a spit. The oven equivalent is dry, steady heat: uncovered at 350F, with the breast shielded with foil or a butter-soaked cloth for the first hour.
- BastingLiberal basting compensated for a bird that had no help from a closed oven. In a modern oven it does little for moisture and costs you heat every time the door opens; two or three bastings are ample, or brine the bird instead.
- TrufflesThree fresh truffles in a stuffing puts this among the more expensive dishes in the book. A tablespoon of truffle paste, or 1 lb of finely chopped brown mushrooms cooked down hard until dry, will give some of the same savoury depth, though not the perfume.
- Pluck, draw and singeAll done for you. Do check the cavity for the giblet packet and any remaining pinfeathers, and dry the skin thoroughly - a wet skin will not brown.
- The egg yolksThree yolks beaten into the hot onion mixture over gentle heat is a custard, and it will scramble if the pan gets too hot. Take the pan off the flame, let it cool for a minute, then stir the yolks in and return it to the lowest heat until it thickens.
- Cost and yield8s. to 14s. was a substantial sum for a single dish in Victorian terms. Six or seven servings is conservative by modern standards; a 12 lb bird will feed ten with leftovers.
Roast turkey with an onion-based forcemeat belongs to a period when English cooks distinguished between stuffings for different birds - sage and onion for goose and duck, chestnut or sausage for turkey, oyster forcemeat for the grandest tables. Cassell's offers this version as an alternative to the more usual sage-and-onion or chestnut treatment, and the truffles and tomato or truffle sauce mark it as the more Frenchified option. The instruction to take a "well-kept but perfectly sweet" bird reflects the practice of hanging poultry for some days to tenderise it and deepen the flavour, a judgement made by smell; refrigeration and modern slaughter-to-shelf timing have removed both the practice and the risk it carried. Hen turkeys were generally reckoned better for roasting than the larger males, being smaller and finer in the flesh.