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Turkey-Bone Soup
Water to cover bones 2 carrots 1 onion 1 stalk celery 3 potatoes 1 tablespoon barley 1 tablespoon rice 1 sprig parsley Pepper and salt Put the turkey bones in a kettle and cover them with water; boil slowly for three hours; add the other ingredients, chopping the onions, parsley and celery and cutting the potatoes and carrots into small dice. Boil until the vegetables are tender. season to taste and serve.
A classic post-holiday carcass soup with no quantities for the bones and no yield given. A few adjustments bring it in line with modern practice.
- ScaleThe recipe specifies neither bone quantity nor yield. One turkey carcass broken into pieces, covered by roughly 4 quarts of water, should give something in the region of 3 quarts of finished soup, or 6 to 8 bowls; the tablespoon each of barley and rice is sparse at that volume.
- "Boil slowly" means simmerHold the bones at a bare tremble, around 195F, with the surface barely moving. A true rolling boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and turns the stock cloudy and greasy.
- Break the bones upCrack the carcass and separate the joints before it goes into the kettle so everything sits under the water. Marrow and cartilage give the body that makes this soup worth making at all.
- Strain before the vegetables go inThe recipe adds vegetables to the bones, which leaves you fishing splinters out of the bowls. Lift the bones out, strain the liquid, pick off any usable meat, then proceed.
- Timing of the grainsPearl barley wants 40 to 45 minutes and white rice about 18. Add the barley with the carrots and onion and the rice roughly twenty minutes later, or the rice will disintegrate.
- PotatoesSmall dice of potato cook in 12 to 15 minutes. Left in for the full barley cooking time they break down and thicken the soup into something closer to a chowder.
- Skim and degreaseSkim the foam in the first half hour, and if you have time, chill the strained stock so the fat sets on top and lifts off in a sheet. Turkey renders a good deal of fat.
- Salt at the endThe recipe seasons last, and rightly so. Three hours of boiling reduces the liquid and will concentrate any salt already carried on the bones and skin.
Soup from a picked-over carcass is the oldest kind of thrift in a cookbook, and a recipe like this belonged in the days immediately after a holiday roast rather than in any planned menu. Turkey was largely a seasonal bird in this era, raised for autumn and winter tables, so turkey-bone soup tended to be a late-autumn and winter dish in a way that chicken soup never was.