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Boiled Turkey
Wash well with cold water, then put on in milk-warm water, either tied in a coarse cloth dredged with flour or with a half-pound of rice in the water. Keep well under water, and boil slowly three hours, adding salt just before it is done. When perfectly done and tender, take out of the pot, sprinkle in the cavity a little pepper and salt, and fill with oysters stewed just enough to plump them, and season, with butter, pepper, salt and vinegar. Place in a dish and set in a steamer to keep hot. Strain the liquor in which the oysters were scalded, add drawn butter, chopped celery, parsley and thyme; pour over the turkey, and serve. If not convenient to use oysters, use egg and butter sauce. Garnish with sliced lemons.--Mrs. S. T.
Boiled Turkey.
Prepare the turkey as for roasting. Tie it in a cloth or boil rice in the pot with it, if you wish it to look white. It is improved by boiling a pound or two of salt pork with it. If soup is made of the liquor, let it stand till next day and skim the fat. Season after heating.--Mrs. W.
Two versions of the same dish from two contributors. Both assume a bird small enough to sit in a pot with water over it, and both are really about keeping the meat pale and moist while the liquor becomes the basis of a sauce.
- The hinge: never let it boil"Boil slowly" means a bare simmer, 180-190F, with the surface barely moving. A true rolling boil shreds the breast and tightens the leg meat before the thigh is cooked through. Pull the bird at 165F in the thickest part of the thigh.
- Bird size and real timingThe recipe gives no weight, only three hours, which would suit a bird of roughly 12-14 lb; anything much larger is hard to keep submerged in a domestic stockpot. A 10 lb bird will likely be done in about two to two and a half hours; check with a thermometer rather than the clock, since a poached bird gives no browning cue.
- Salt the water soonerMrs. S. T. adds salt only at the end, which probably reflects the old belief that early salting toughens meat; modern practice has dropped it. Salting the water from the start seasons the meat and the liquor both. If you use the salt pork from the second version, hold back most of the added salt.
- The cloth and the riceBoth tricks are for whiteness; the second version says outright to boil rice with the bird "if you wish it to look white." A flour-dredged cloth wrapping shields the surface. Neither is necessary now; skip them unless you want the pale Victorian look, in which case a doubled cheesecloth wrap is easier to handle than a coarse one.
- Drawn butterNot clarified butter. In nineteenth-century American usage drawn butter is a plain white sauce: butter melted with a spoonful of flour, thinned here with the strained oyster liquor. Aim for about 2 tablespoons butter and 1 of flour to a cup of liquid.
- Oysters: two minutes, no more"Stewed just enough to plump them" is the whole instruction. Bring the oysters and their liquor up to a bare simmer until the edges ruffle, one to two minutes, then lift them out. Held longer they shrink and turn rubbery, and the cavity of a hot turkey will keep cooking them.
- Egg and butter sauceThe stated alternative is drawn butter with two or three hard-boiled eggs chopped into it, a standard accompaniment to boiled poultry and fish in this period. Season it well; it is bland otherwise.
- The liquor is worth keepingMrs. W. is right that soup from it should be chilled overnight so the fat lifts off in a sheet. The broth is lightly salted and, if rice was used, slightly thickened, so taste before reducing it.
- YieldA 12 lb bird serves ten to twelve. Serve it carved onto a warm platter with the sauce poured over; poached turkey cools faster than roast, so warm the dish and keep the sauce hot.
Boiled turkey was a standard dressed-poultry dish on American and English tables through the nineteenth century, when boiling was often said to be a common way to cook a large fowl in a household without a reliable oven, and a pale, unbrowned bird under a white sauce was considered elegant rather than a compromise. The oyster filling and oyster-liquor sauce were a familiar pairing across the nineteenth-century American East and in England, and oysters were cheap and plentiful in the cold months, turning up in stuffings, sauces and pies all winter. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housekeepers, prints recipes as they were sent in and signed with initials, which is why the same dish appears twice in slightly different form here. The advice to chill the liquor overnight and lift the fat, and to add salt pork for flavor, is the voice of a kitchen where nothing from a large bird went unused.