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Turkey En Casserole
The remains of a turkey I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) butter I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) flour 1 pint (2 cups) stock I bay leaf 3 sprigs parsley I small onion 1 wineglassful port wine Salt and pepper to taste Put the bones and trimmings of the turkey, the onion, and herbs, with water to cover, into an earthenware pan. Let these simmer for one hour. Melt the butter,
A thrifty second-day turkey dish: the carcass makes the stock, the stock makes the sauce, and the picked meat is only warmed through in it. The instructions break off partway, so treat what follows as guidance on the parts that are legible.
- Read the ones correctlyThe quantities are given as a heaping tablespoonful (1 oz.) each of butter and flour, 1 pint of stock, 1 small onion, 1 bay leaf and 1 wineglassful of port. Each of those figures is a numeral one, not a letter.
- WineglassfulIn English cookery books of this period a wineglass is about 2 fluid ounces, a quarter cup. Ruby or tawny port both work; a tablespoon more will not hurt, but a full modern wine glass would swamp a pint of sauce.
- The casserole itself'En casserole' refers to cooking in an earthenware vessel rather than to the later American baked dish. The only pot the recipe names is the 'earthenware pan' used for simmering the carcass; the text breaks off before saying how the dish was finished.
- Stock from the frameOne hour of simmering on a carcass that has already been roasted is enough to draw out flavour; longer chiefly reduces it. Strain, skim the fat, and measure a full pint (2 cups). If the bones yield less, top up with water or a light chicken stock rather than boiling down.
- The rouxMelt the ounce of butter, stir in the ounce of flour and cook it a minute or two before adding the hot stock a little at a time. Equal weights of butter and flour to a pint of liquid gives a pouring sauce, not a thick one.
- Do not cook the turkey againThe meat is already cooked. Carve it into neat pieces, add it to the finished sauce, and bring it only to a bare simmer. The surviving text gives no oven instruction; if you prefer to finish it covered in the oven, a moderate heat for fifteen to twenty minutes is enough. Boiled hard, cold roast turkey turns dry and stringy.
- When to add the portStir the wine in near the end and let it lose its raw edge for a minute or two. Salt last, since reduced turkey stock concentrates quickly.
- YieldA pint of sauce will carry roughly a pound of picked meat and serve four with rice, toast or mashed potato.
Casserole cookery is often said to have had a vogue in English and American kitchens in the earlier part of the twentieth century, when glazed earthenware pots that could go from stove to oven to table were valued as both economical and fashionable. A "cold meat" chapter was a familiar feature of cookery books of the period: the roast was expected to appear a second and third time, and the cook's task, by tradition at least, was to disguise it. Port in a brown sauce for game or poultry is an old English habit, generally traced to the eighteenth-century fondness for fortified wine in made dishes, and it does the useful work of covering the slightly flat taste of reheated meat. The instruction to simmer the bones with an onion and herbs before making the sauce is the whole economy of the recipe: nothing of the bird is thrown away until it has given up its stock.