F. C. W
Turkey Salad.
Remove the skin and fat from a turkey; mince the meat fine. Mince 2 or 3 slices lean ham. 2 or 3 bunches celery. 3 or 4 apples. 3 or 4 cucumber pickles; mix well together.
Prepare a dressing of the yolks of four eggs, rubbed in a little thick cream. 4 tablespoonfuls butter. 2 teaspoonfuls black pepper. 2 teaspoonfuls salt. 2 teaspoonfuls of mustard. Vinegar to the taste. --Mrs. Dr. S.
Turkey Salad.
Boil two turkeys till well done, pick out all the bones, skin and fat and cut up the balance in small pieces.
Boil one dozen eggs hard, yet them cool, then separate the yolks and whites, mash the yolks fine, chop the whites very fine and set them to one side. Have a large flat dish, in which put four large spoonfuls mixed mustard; pour in a little oil, and with a fork rub it in till smooth, then a little vinegar, in which has been melted two full tablespoonfuls of salt, then oil and alternately put in oil an vinegar, each time rubbing it in till well mixed. When you have mixed a whole bottle of oil and one pint vinegar till it is as smooth as butter, add one heaping teaspoonful cayenne pepper, three teaspoonfuls celery--seed rubbed fine in a mortar, and one large mango cut fine, put in stuffing and all.
Have ready as much celery as you have fowl, cut fine, mix meat and celery carefully together, and pour the dressing over all.--Mrs. E. I.
Two versions of the same cold-turkey dish from different contributors, one a small household batch, the other a party quantity built like a hand-whisked mayonnaise. A few of the terms have shifted meaning since 1879.
- "Mango" is not the fruitIn nineteenth-century American usage a mango is a pickled stuffed vegetable, usually a small muskmelon or a sweet pepper packed with spiced mustard filling. That is why the instruction says to add it "stuffing and all." A large pickled pepper or a couple of stuffed pickles is the closest modern stand-in.
- Celery by the bunchA "bunch" of celery is one whole head, not a single rib. Two or three heads for one turkey is right for the proportions given, and the second recipe's rule of equal volumes of celery and meat is the more reliable guide.
- "A whole bottle of oil"Bottle sizes varied, but if the bottle held about a pint this comes out at roughly equal volumes of oil and vinegar, far more acid than a modern mayonnaise, and the mixture is likely to stay loose rather than setting firm.
- The hinge: add the oil slowlyThe second dressing carries no egg at all, and the mustard does much of the work of holding it together. Oil and vinegar must go in a little at a time, each addition rubbed smooth before the next, or it may separate.
- Raw yolks in the first dressingMrs. Dr. S.'s dressing is never heated: four raw yolks worked into cream and softened butter. Use pasteurized eggs if the salad is for a crowd or for anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised, and keep it refrigerated.
- The chopped whitesThe second recipe has you separate and chop a dozen hard-boiled whites, then never mentions them again; the mashed yolks are also never used. Scattering the whites over the finished salad is a reasonable guess at what was intended.
- Cucumber picklesMost likely plain brined or sour cucumbers rather than sweet ones. Sweet gherkins would sit oddly in the first version, which has apples in it already.
- YieldTwo boiled turkeys with an equal volume of celery is banquet scale, enough for many dozens. Halve or quarter the second recipe for a household, or work from the first, which is built on a single bird.
Turkey salad is a thrift dish dressed for company, of a piece with chicken salad and croquettes: a way to bring a large roasted bird back to the table a second and third day without admitting to leftovers. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, the compilation Marion Cabell Tyree assembled from named and initialled Virginia contributors, was published in 1878 and works in exactly this way, though the attribution of this page to it cannot be confirmed from the text alone. The pairing of poultry with celery and a mustard-heavy dressing was common in American cookery in the second half of the century, and the two recipes here show how unstandardized dressing-making still was, one cook reaching for yolks, cream and butter, the other building an emulsion on mustard alone and measuring oil by the bottle. The initials at the end, Mrs. Dr. S. and Mrs. E. I., are typical of a book crediting contributors while withholding their full names.