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Roast Turkey
Remove the crusts from a stale loaf of bread. Break the loaf in the middle and grate or rub the bread into fine crumbs.
Season highly with salt and pepper. Add a cup of diced celery, cooked tender.
With a fork mix celery and seasoning well through the crumbs, then sprinkle over and through them three or four tablespoons of melted butter. With a spoon put the prepared crumbs in the place from which the crop was removed until the breast becomes plump. the remaining crumbs in the body. Do not pack the crumbs closely in either crop or body, but allow room for them to swell when moistened by the steam from the turkey in cooking. Fold back the wings. Press the legs close to the body, crossing the drumsticks in front of the tail. With small skewers and strong cord fasten in proper shape. Place the turkey, back up, on a rack in the roasting Put pan. When the back is browned turn the turkey over, and when the breast and sides are nicely browned, baste with a thin gravy every ten or fifteen minutes until the fowl is cooked. An eightpound turkey will cook thoroughly in two hours. Use the water in which the celery was cooked to make basting gravy for the turkey.-Emma P. Ewing.
A plain roast turkey with a crumb-and-celery dressing, written for a cook who already knew how to run a coal range. The gaps to fill are oven temperature, doneness, and the handling of the stuffing.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given because a range of the period was judged by hand and by the browning of the bird. Roast at 325F throughout; the two-stage browning described here works at that heat without scorching the drumsticks.
- "The place from which the crop was removed"This is the neck cavity, the pocket of loose skin at the front of the breast. Filling it is what gives the plump breast line the recipe is after; pin the neck skin under the back with a skewer so the dressing stays put.
- Stuffing and donenessThe single number that matters is not in the original. The thickest part of the thigh should read 165F and the centre of the dressing, in both cavities, must reach the same. Dressing packed inside a bird heats slowly, which is precisely why the recipe insists on a loose fill.
- Two hours for eight poundsOptimistic by modern tables even for an unstuffed eight-pound bird at 325F, which run nearer 2 3/4 to 3 hours, and 3 to 3 1/2 hours stuffed. Start checking at two hours. Birds of that era were probably leaner and smaller-breasted than a modern broad-breasted turkey of the same weight, so go by the thermometer, not the clock.
- The breadGrated stale crumbs are much finer and drier than torn bread cubes, and they absorb steam and butter into a dense, sliceable dressing rather than a fluffy one. A day-old firm white loaf, crusts off, grated on a box grater or pulsed briefly, gives the right texture.
- Three or four tablespoons of butterSparing by current taste for a whole loaf's worth of crumbs. The dressing is meant to be moistened chiefly by steam from the bird, so it will read as dry if you pull it out early.
- TrussingSmall metal skewers and kitchen twine still do the job; butcher's twine is the modern "strong cord". Turning an eight-pound bird from back to breast partway through is easiest with two wads of paper towel or a pair of silicone mitts rather than a fork, which tears the skin.
- Basting gravyThe recipe's basting liquid is a thin gravy made from the water the celery was cooked in; it is worth keeping, as it carries salt and celery flavour onto the skin. Basting every ten to fifteen minutes means opening the oven repeatedly, so add time for the heat you lose.
- YieldAn eight-pound turkey with this dressing serves six to eight.
Emma P. Ewing was one of the working cooking-school teachers of the American 1880s and 90s, associated with the Chautauqua movement and with domestic-science instruction in the Midwest, and known for short practical manuals on single subjects — bread, soup, salads. Her voice is audible here in the fussy, sequential detail: which cavity to fill first, how loosely, when to turn, and the thrifty instruction not to throw out the celery water. Turkey was still a seasonal, occasion bird in the period this book collects from, roasted whole for Thanksgiving and Christmas rather than eaten year-round, which is why a recipe like this assumes the reader has done it once a year at most and needs to be told each step. The dressing itself is the older Anglo-American type: grated bread, butter, salt, pepper, and one vegetable, with no sausage, chestnut, or dried fruit. Celery cooked tender before being mixed in was a mark of careful practice at a time when celery was a comparatively expensive winter luxury, often served raw in tall glass vases on the holiday table.