Roast Turkey
Dress, clean, and stuff turkey and follow directions for Roast Chicken. Some prefer to rub the surface of the turkey with butter and flour creamed together instead of dredging with flour.
A cross-reference rather than a full recipe: Lowney's expects you to have read Roast Chicken a few pages earlier and simply scale it up. The gaps are worth filling in.
- "Dress and clean"In 1907 this meant plucking any remaining pinfeathers, singeing hairs over a flame, drawing the bird and removing the neck and giblets. A modern supermarket turkey arrives dressed; you need only pull the neck and giblet bag from both cavities and pat the bird dry.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives no numbers; a 1907 range had no thermostat and heat was judged by hand and by feel. A workable modern equivalent is 450F for the first 20 to 30 minutes to set the surface, then 325F for the remainder.
- Timing and donenessRoughly 13 to 15 minutes per pound unstuffed at 325F, but time is only a guide. Cook to 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, clear of the bone. Older tables that call for 20 to 25 minutes per pound produce dry breast meat.
- The butter-and-flour surfaceThe alternative given here is butter and flour creamed to a paste, the same mixture as a beurre manie, rubbed over the skin; roughly 3 tablespoons softened butter to 2 tablespoons flour will cover a 12 lb bird. It browns more evenly than dry dredging and leaves flour in the pan drippings, so the gravy thickens without a separate roux.
- Stuffing inside the birdIf you stuff, the centre of the dressing must also reach 165F, which usually means overcooking the breast. Pack loosely, or bake the stuffing in a dish alongside and moisten it with pan juices.
- BastingBasting every 15 minutes with fat from the pan was the usual instruction in cookbooks of this period, though nothing is said of it here. It does little for moisture but does help colour; each opening of the door costs heat. Three or four times is enough.
- RestingNot mentioned in the original. Let the bird stand 20 to 30 minutes under loose foil before carving, which is also when you make the gravy.
- YieldReckon about 1 lb of undressed turkey per person for a generous table with leftovers; a 12 to 14 lb bird serves 10 to 12.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and published in 1907 by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer -- one of many turn-of-the-century cookbooks issued by food firms to keep their product in the kitchen. That commercial origin explains the terseness here: turkey is not chocolate, and the meat chapter is dispatched efficiently, with the whole method delegated to the roast chicken entry. The one detail Howard thought worth spelling out, creamed butter and flour rubbed on the skin instead of a dry flour dredge, is a small point of technique that separated a careful cook from a hurried one. Roast turkey by this date was firmly fixed as the American holiday centrepiece, a New England habit that spread nationally over the nineteenth century, and a Boston book could assume its readers had roasted several.
STUFFING (Melt two tablespoons butter)
Melt two tablespoons butter, add one tablespoon chopped onion, three cups soft bread crumbs, chopped liver and heart, one teaspoon salt, one teaspoon poultry seasoning, one tablespoon chopped pickles, and one quarter teaspoon pepper. Prepare turkey for roasting; stuff, sew, truss. Bake in hot oven, allowing fifteen minutes to the pound. Baste frequently. Dredge and season twice during cooking.