Home › Recipes › Boning a Turkey
Boning a Turkey
Some wonders never do cease. The same conjurer's trick of the speaking head which Cervantes says so deeply impressed poor Don Quixote still astonishes and mystifies some portion of the public at the wizard's show, and our wicked butchers still find some customers can be set strangely pondering when they are told that hotel cooks can take all the bones out of a turkey without ever cutting the skin, as if it were a feat like drawing a large iron ring through the neck of a vial. There was no difficulty in making the egg stand on end when Columbus had damaged the shell a little, and you can get at the inwardness of a turkey quite easily after laying the skin of the back open. Cut close to the bone with a sharp-pointed knife till the hip joints and wing joints are reached and cut partially around, then with the heavy handle end of a carving knife chop through those joints, and going a little further, loosening all along, the whole backbone portion can presently be pulled out forcibly, leaving the limbs and breast to be boned separately. The wings and drumsticks have only to be boned part way, as the meat is tucked into the body; the rest may be chopped off. While of course neat work is better than slovenly it does not quite spoil the job if the skin does get an unkind cut sometimes; the very top of the breast bone is the place requiring the most care; better cut into the bone a little than risk a perforation where it will show so plainly on the galantine.
As the turkey is to be pressed in the cloth after cooking there should be no bulging ends or seams in the way to leave their mark.
This is a working method rather than a formula: no quantities, no oven, just the sequence of cuts that gets the skeleton out of a bird destined for galantine. A few things the original assumes you already know.
- Start from the back, not the neckThe whole point of the passage is that the theatrical version, boning through the neck with the skin unbroken, is unnecessary. Split the skin along the backbone and work down both sides; the seam ends up underneath and disappears under pressing.
- The one cut that mattersThe top of the breastbone, where the skin lies thin and directly over the keel, is where a slip shows on the finished slice. Scrape into the bone rather than risk going through the skin there. Everywhere else, a nick can be closed when you roll and tie.
- Joints: cut, then breakCut partway around the hip and shoulder joints, then pop them with the heavy end of a carving knife handle as described, or with the heel of a heavy knife. Modern kitchens would use poultry shears for the same job. Do not saw at the joint with a blade tip; you will shred the skin around it.
- Wings and drumsticksBone only the upper part and push the meat inward, then cut off the wing tips and the lower drumstick with the bone still in. Bulges and knobs prevent an even cylinder and print through the cloth.
- Keep the bird coldBoning a turkey is slow work with warm hands on raw poultry. Work on a chilled surface, return the bird to refrigeration if you stop, and wash boards and knives before the forcemeat stage. This is the part the original had no reason to mention.
- "Pressed in the cloth"The galantine is rolled in a cloth, tied, poached in stock, then cooled under weight so it slices clean. Plan for overnight chilling under a board and a few pounds of weight; the pressing is what turns it from a stuffed bird into a terrine-like loaf.
- What to do with the frameThe backbone, wing tips and drumstick ends will make the poaching stock. Roasting them first gives a darker, deeper-flavoured liquid; the gelatine that sets the aspic around a cold galantine comes from the bones and skin themselves, not from the roasting.
- YieldThe original gives no weight and no yield. A boned turkey, stuffed and pressed, cuts into many thin cold slices, which is buffet quantity rather than a family dinner; the passage's frame of reference is the hotel kitchen.
Galantine is hotel-kitchen work of exactly the kind The American Pastry Cook was written to demystify: a bird boned, stuffed with forcemeat, poached, pressed and served cold in slices on a buffet, often glazed and set about with aspic. The name's origin is disputed: it is sometimes traced to an Old French word for a hen, while other authorities connect it with the medieval Latin root behind 'gelatine'. The dish belongs to the long French tradition of reassembling a boned bird into a neater shape than nature gave it. The book's tone here is worth noting: the writer is deliberately puncturing a professional mystique, the boast that a cook can extract every bone without breaking the skin, and pointing out that a cut down the back does the same job and hides itself once the roll is pressed. That impatience with showmanship, and the aside about "our wicked butchers" teasing customers, fits the American hotel and restaurant kitchens of the later nineteenth century, where elaborate cold buffet pieces were expected and had to be produced quickly by whoever was on the station.