Roast Turkey
Singe and wipe the turkey with a cloth; draw it, preserving the liver and gizzard, but be careful not to break the gall-bag. Wash well, having a little soda dissolved in the water. Fill the body with bread, oyster, or chestnut stuffing. Sew up the body and the neck; bind the wings and legs snugly to the body, and if the turkey is scrawny lay thin slices of fat salt pork on the breast. Now lay it on the grating of your covered roaster; pour in a cupful of boiling water, then cover and bake for two or three hours, according to the size of the fowl. When nearly done, remove the cover and wash with butter, then dredge with flour and set in the oven to brown. Dish the turkey on a heated platter, and set in the open oven to keep warm while you make the gravy. Thicken the contents of the dripping-pan with a tablespoonful of browned flour, season with salt and pepper, and add the finely chopped giblets. Boil one minute, then pour into a gravy-boat. Serve cranberry-sauce with turkey if possible.
A standard covered-roaster turkey from the era when birds arrived whole and undressed. The method is sound; what it omits is any oven temperature and any test for doneness beyond the clock.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Set 325F for the covered stage, then 425F for the short uncovered browning at the end.
- Timing by weight"Two or three hours" assumes a 10-14 lb bird. Reckon roughly 15 minutes per pound covered, but go by the thermometer: 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, and 165F in the centre of the stuffing if the bird is stuffed.
- Stuffing the birdThe center of the stuffing takes on juices from the cavity and must reach 165F itself. If it lags behind the thigh, spoon it into a dish and finish it separately rather than overcooking the breast.
- Drawing and the gall-bagModern birds come drawn, with the giblets bagged and the gall already removed. If you buy a farm bird undrawn, the warning stands: a broken gall bladder makes the liver and anything it touches inedibly bitter.
- The soda washDissolved soda in the wash water was probably meant to freshen birds of uncertain age. Skip it, and skip rinsing altogether; splashing raw poultry water around a sink spreads more than it cleans.
- Salt pork bardingStill the best fix for a lean bird. Thin slices laid over the breast baste it as they render; lift them off for the browning stage or they will shield the skin from color.
- "Wash with butter"Brush with melted butter, then dust lightly with flour. The flour catches and sets into a freckled brown crust in the hot oven.
- Browned flourFlour toasted dry in a pan until nut-colored. It thickens less than raw flour, so a tablespoon in the pan drippings gives a thin gravy; use two if you want body.
- Giblet gravyThe recipe keeps only the liver and gizzard; simmer the gizzard (and the neck and heart, if you have them) until tender before chopping, and add the liver only for the last few minutes. One minute of boiling is enough for the finished gravy, but the giblets themselves need up to an hour.
- YieldReckon about a pound of dressed weight per person, so a 12 lb bird serves ten to twelve.
The covered roaster called for here was a piece of turn-of-the-century equipment worth noticing: a deep oval pan with a domed lid and an internal rack, widely sold around 1900 and often advertised as making a tough or elderly bird tender. The cup of boiling water and the closed lid mean the first hours are largely moist cooking, with only the final uncovered spell doing the actual roasting -- a sensible approach to farmyard turkeys that were likely older, leaner and more exercised than anything on sale today. The three stuffings offered mark the period as well: bread was the everyday choice, oyster a common American holiday choice while barrelled oysters still moved inland by rail, and chestnut the more fashionable one, later made costlier in the United States by the chestnut blight identified in New York in 1904. The instruction to serve cranberry-sauce "if possible" suggests the pairing was expected but the fruit not always to hand.