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Turkey Soup
Take the carcass and all that is left of a roast turkey. Cut all the good bits of meat from the bones and put it aside by itself; take out the stuffing and set it aside. Crack the bones and put them with any scraps of meat in a kettle with cold water enough to well cover them. Add 1 chopped onion, 1 teaspoonful salt, and a little pepper. After it has simmered two hours, or until the bones are clean, strain through a colander, cool, and remove the fat. Put on the fire and put in the sliced meat, both light and dark, in the proportion of 1 cupful to a quart of stock. Add a few spoonfuls of the stuffing. Let all simmer together for half an hour and serve. If there is no stuffing left, add more seasoning, and thicken with browned flour and butter. Chicken or any other fowl or game can be used in the same way.
A carcass soup that depends on two things: a long enough simmer to strip the bones, and the leftover stuffing used as a thickener and seasoning base. Both are worth respecting.
- Chill the carcass firstThe original is silent on how soon after roasting the bird is broken down. If the turkey has been refrigerated, get the bones into the pot within three to four days, and do not leave a picked carcass sitting at room temperature while you work through it.
- Cold water startCovering the cracked bones with cold water and bringing them up slowly draws more gelatin and gives a clearer stock than dropping them into boiling water. Skim the grey foam in the first fifteen minutes.
- Two hours is the floor"Until the bones are clean" is the real instruction. A large turkey frame often wants three hours; a chicken carcass may be done in ninety minutes.
- DegreasingCooling and lifting the fat is not optional with turkey, which throws a great deal. Refrigerating the strained stock overnight lets the fat set into a cap you can lift off whole.
- The stuffing as thickenerA few spoonfuls of bread stuffing will break down and body the soup, carrying whatever seasoning it holds into the broth. If the stuffing contained sausage or oysters, taste before adding more salt.
- Browned flour and butterThe alternative thickening is a brown roux: equal weights of butter and flour cooked until nut-coloured, then whisked into the hot stock. Roughly 2 tablespoons of each per quart gives a lightly thickened soup.
- Don't overcook the meatThe reserved light and dark meat is already cooked. Half an hour of simmering is the outside limit before it goes stringy; ten minutes is enough to heat it through if you prefer.
- YieldThe recipe gives no water quantity or serving count. As a rough guide, a turkey frame covered with three to four quarts of water may reduce to about two to three quarts of stock, with meat added at the recipe's cup per quart.
Carcass soup is the working end of a roast dinner, and household manuals of the period commonly present it as a matter of thrift: the bird has been paid for whole, so the bones owe you a second meal. This version's distinguishing touch is the instruction to stir in leftover stuffing, which would thicken and flavour a thin broth at once and kept the seasoning of the roast in circulation. The closing line, that chicken or any other fowl or game can be used the same way, is a common economy in compilations of this kind, which often favoured one method applied broadly over many separate entries.