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Roast Turkey
Singe and clean the turkey the same as chicken. Fill with plain or oyster stuffing; roast and serve with giblet sauce and cranberry sauce. If the turkey is very large it will require three hours or longer; a small one will require only an hour and a half. Baste frequently, as turkey is apt to be more dry than chicken.
This is a reference note rather than a full method — Mrs. Fryer assumes you already know her chicken instructions and her stuffing and sauce recipes. The gaps worth filling are the oven temperature, the internal temperature, and the fact that her timings are short by modern standards.
- SingeingSingeing meant passing a freshly plucked bird over a flame or burning paper to remove hair and pinfeathers. A supermarket turkey needs none of this; just pull the neck and giblets from the cavity, dry the skin well, and check under the wings for missed quills.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given in the recipe. Roast at 325F throughout, or start at 425F for the first 30 minutes and drop to 325F to get colour on the skin.
- The timings are too shortThe timings are short -- An hour and a half will not cook a whole turkey of the sizes usually sold today. Reckon roughly 13-15 minutes per pound unstuffed at 325F, and 15-18 minutes per pound stuffed — a 12 lb stuffed bird runs about 3.5 hours. Weight is a poor guide anyway; the thermometer decides.
- Internal temperatureThickest part of the thigh, away from bone, should read 175F; the breast 165F. If you stuff the bird, the centre of the stuffing must also reach 165F, which is the reason stuffed birds take so much longer. Pack the stuffing loosely and only just before it goes in the oven.
- Oyster stuffingOysters shed liquor and dilute the bread, so drain them and use less milk or broth than a plain stuffing calls for. Chop large oysters; whole ones in a dressing that has to hit 165F end up tough.
- BastingHer warning about dryness is sound, though basting is generally thought to do less for the meat than it seems, and opening the oven loses heat. A dry brine — salt the bird inside and out and refrigerate uncovered for 12 to 24 hours — does more, as does tenting the breast with foil once it browns.
- Giblet sauceSimmer the neck, heart and gizzard (not the liver, which turns bitter) in water with an onion and a bay leaf while the bird roasts, then use that broth and the pan drippings for gravy, with the giblets chopped fine.
- Resting and yieldRest the bird 20 to 30 minutes before carving. Allow about a pound of dressed weight per person for a table that expects leftovers, or three quarters of a pound if not.
The turkey is a North American bird, domesticated in Mexico long before European contact and carried back to Europe in the sixteenth century, where it picked up a muddle of names suggesting the wrong continent. By the time this book was compiled, roast turkey with bread or oyster stuffing, giblet gravy and cranberry sauce had settled into the fixed American holiday form it still has; oyster stuffing in particular is generally traced to the Atlantic seaboard, where cheap barrelled and canned oysters travelled inland by rail and turned up in dressings far from any coast.