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Roast Turkey No. 2
Select a fat, medium sized turkey. Put in a roasting pan and cook until half done. Then stuff the turkey with a dressing made of equal parts of toasted biscuits and rich egg bread moistened with the stock from turkey. Season dressing with half cup butter, pepper and salt to taste, 2 tablespoons chopped celery. After turkey is well stuffed, put in roasting pan and bake until tender, basting often with the gravy. To this dressing you would add cup of fresh oysters or a cup of raisins, whichever you prefer. To serve with the turkey coddled apples, stuffed with cranberry jelly.
The recipe assumes a cook who already knows how long a turkey takes and gives no oven setting, no weight and no time. Everything else is guidance about the dressing.
- Oven and timingThe recipe gives neither temperature nor time. A modern default would be 325F; at that heat a 12-14 lb bird takes roughly 3 to 3 1/2 hours in total, so "half done" would fall somewhere near the halfway mark, when the skin has set and colored but the legs are still stiff.
- The hinge: stuffing a part-roasted birdFilling a warm cavity partway through roasting is the whole point of the method here, and it is also the risk. Dressing packed into a bird that is already hot sits in the danger zone for a long time; take the finished stuffing to 165F on an instant-read thermometer at the center, and the thigh to 175F. Baking the dressing in a separate dish, moistened with pan stock, gives the same flavor without the guesswork.
- "Toasted biscuits and rich egg bread"Southern baking-powder biscuits, dried in a low oven, plus egg bread, which in Southern usage generally means a cornmeal batter bread enriched with eggs and milk, close to a firm spoonbread, though the phrase can also mean an egg-enriched wheat loaf. Day-old cornbread and biscuits, torn and toasted, are the usual modern equivalent.
- Quantities in the dressingNo total volume is given. For a medium turkey, something like 8 cups of torn bread and cornbread combined is a reasonable guess; against that, half a cup of butter and 2 tablespoons of chopped celery are what the recipe specifies, though many cooks today would use more celery and add onion.
- Moistening with stockThe stock from the turkey means the pan drippings deglazed with a little water, or giblet broth. Add it a few tablespoons at a time -- the mixture should hold together when pressed, not turn to paste.
- Oysters or raisinsA cup of shucked oysters, drained and roughly chopped, folded in at the end; their liquor can replace some of the stock. If you use them, be certain of the 165F reading. The raisin version belongs to the sweet-dressing tradition and needs no soaking.
- Coddled applesFirm baking apples, cored and gently poached or baked until just tender but still holding shape, then filled with cranberry jelly. Half an apple per person is plenty alongside the meat.
- Basting"Basting often with the gravy" means the pan juices, not a finished sauce. Every 30 minutes is sufficient; opening the oven more often than that costs more heat than the basting gains.
Mrs. Wilson wrote for Philadelphia readers in the years around the First World War, was associated with the Ladies' Home Journal as a food writer, and was an advocate of household thrift. The dressing looks Southern in its bones: biscuits and egg bread rather than a wheat loaf, and the choice between oysters and raisins. The instruction to stuff the bird only after it is half roasted is unusual, and it is the reason the method now needs a thermometer alongside it.