Home › The Principles of Cookery › Turkey, Trussed for Roasting
Turkey, Trussed for Roasting
Pluck and singe the bird, and in drawing it preserve the liver and gizzard. Be particularly careful not to break the gall-bag, which adheres to the liver, as if any of the gall touches the bird no amount of washing will remove the bitter taste which it will impart. Cut off the feet, and draw out the strings or sinews from the things--there are five or six in each leg. Place three or four folds of cloth on the high breast-bone, and break and flatten it with a rolling-pin to make the bird look plump. Cut off the head and neck close to the body, and before doing so push back the skin of the neck so that sufficient may be left on to turn over the back. Hold the legs in boiling water for a minute or two, and afterwards peel off the rough dirty skin. Fill the breast with forcemeat, and sew the neck over the back. Press the legs close to the breast; and pass a skewer through them and the body. Turn the points of the wings over the back, skewer them through the body, and put the liver under one pinion and the gizzard under the other. Cut a slit in the apron, and put the nose through. Pass a string over the back of the bird, put it firmly round the skewers, and tie it in the middle. Tie a buttered paper over the breast, and be very careful to truss the bird firmly. The liver of the turkey must be freed from gall and covered with a buttered paper, or it will be dry and hard. The gizzard must be carefully cleansed--as it contains stones--skinned and washed, seasoned with pepper and salt, and, like the liver, it should be guarded from the heat by buttered paper.
This is a butchery and trussing entry rather than a cooking one: it assumes a bird that arrives with feathers, head, feet and innards attached. Most of it is redundant with a supermarket turkey, but the parts that still matter matter a great deal.
- The gall bagThe single instruction to obey is the warning about the greenish sac attached to the liver. Bile is intensely bitter and it does not wash off; if you buy a bird with giblets and the gall bladder is still on the liver, cut it away with a wide margin of liver rather than trying to pull it free.
- What you can skipPlucking, singeing, drawing, cutting off the head and feet and scalding the legs to peel the scaly skin are all done for you now. A modern oven-ready bird needs only the neck flap secured and the legs tied.
- Breaking the breastboneFlattening the keel with a rolling pin was done because Victorian table birds were narrow-breasted. Broad-breasted commercial turkeys are already plump to the point of caricature, and smashing the sternum now only tears the breast meat and lets juices run out.
- VocabularyThe pinion is the outer wing joint; the apron is the flap of skin and fat below the vent, slit so the tail (the "nose", i.e. the parson's nose) can be pushed through to close the cavity. The "strings or sinews from the thighs" are the leg tendons, which run through the drumstick and stay tough however long you cook them.
- Forcemeat goes in the neck endThe recipe stuffs the breast — meaning the pocket at the neck, closed by sewing the neck skin over the back. That is still the better place for it. Anything packed into the body cavity slows the heat and must itself reach 74C/165F, by which point the breast is overcooked.
- Buttered paperThe buttered paper over the breast is a protective covering, working much as barding does: it keeps the surface from drying while the legs catch up. Buttered parchment or a loose foil tent does the same job. Remove it for the last 30-40 minutes if you want colour.
- The gibletsRoasting the liver and gizzard tucked under the wings gives you two overcooked scraps and slows the bird's shoulders. Simmer them separately for gravy stock instead, and be aware the gizzard must be split and its grit-filled lining peeled away before use.
- Trussing tightlyCassell's is right that the bird must be firm, but very tight trussing insulates the thigh joint, which is the last part to reach temperature. Tie the drumsticks together and tuck the wing tips, and check the deepest part of the thigh with a thermometer rather than trusting time.
Cassell's is writing for a household that bought poultry whole and feathered, often from a poulterer or direct from a farm, and expected the cook to do everything from singeing off the down to drawing the bird. Trussing entries like this one are the plumbing of Victorian cookery books: settle the method once, and every roast fowl recipe afterwards can then simply say "truss as directed". The concern with making the bird "look plump" is a reminder that the turkeys of the period were long-legged, narrow-breasted birds, often driven to market on their own feet, nothing like the broad-breasted strains developed in the twentieth century. The turkey itself is a North American bird, domesticated in Mesoamerica and brought to Europe by the Spanish in the sixteenth century; the English name is generally traced to a confusion with guinea fowl, which reached England through Turkish-controlled trade routes.