“His manner of roasting a turkey was indeed novel; he placed his bird on a spit, put it in an iron pot, covered it with hot coals top and bottom, and then kept turning the spit incessantly and basting the bird. Such a perfect roast I have never before or since eaten. I shall speak later on of the Newport turkey and the Southern barnyard-fed turkey, but they are not a circumstance to the Florentine walnut-fed turkey. In Florence, at the markets, all turkeys and fowls were cut up and sold, not as a whole, but piece by piece. For instance, you saw on the marble slabs the breasts of chickens, the wings of chickens, the legs of chickens; the same with turkeys. To get an entire bird, you had to order him ahead, so that a few days before Christmas, as we came home from our drive, we found a superb turkey strutting through the drawing-room, the largest creature I had ever seen, weighing twenty-five pounds. When he was served, the walnuts he had eaten could be seen all over his back in large, round yellow spots of fat. As he came on the table, he was indeed a sight to behold; the skin, as it were, mahogany color and crisp, his flesh partaking of the flavor of the walnut, would have satisfied Lucullus.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
390. INGREDIENTS.--1/2 lb. of chestnuts, 1/2 pint of white stock, 2 strips of lemon-peel, cayenne to taste, 1/4 pint of cream or milk. _Mode_.--Peel off the outside skin of the chestnuts, and put them into boiling water for a few minutes; take off the thin inside peel, and put them into a saucepan, with the white stock and lemon-peel, and let them simmer for 1-1/2 hour, or until the chestnuts are quite tender. Rub the whole through a hair-sieve with a wooden spoon; add seasoning and the cream; let it just simmer, but not boil, and keep stirring all the time. Serve very hot; and quickly. If milk is used instead of cream, a very small quantity of thickening may be required: that, of course, the cook will determine. _Time_.--Altogether nearly two hours. _Average cost_, 8d. _Sufficient_, this quantity, for a turkey.
Sources: The passage is from Ward McAllister, Society as I Have Found It, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, amphora stamp.