Turkey Salad
The same as chicken salad. In cutting up the meat it is best to leave out the thick fat skin. With chickens it makes no difference.
This is a cross-reference entry rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you already have the book's chicken salad in hand and only flags where turkey differs. A few notes on reconstructing it.
- What the base recipe looks likeThe entry gives no details, so the chicken salad must be inferred. Chicken salads of this general period were commonly cut into small dice, tossed with celery, and bound with mayonnaise or a cooked (boiled) dressing just before service, sometimes served on lettuce and garnished with capers or hard-boiled egg. Proportions and garnish would depend on the book's own chicken salad recipe, which is not reproduced here.
- The one instruction that mattersThe whole point of the entry is the fat. Turkey fat and the thick collar of skin tend to set firmer when cold than chicken fat does, which is presumably why the author says the distinction makes no difference with chickens. Strip the skin and any heavy subcutaneous fat before dicing.
- Cut, do not shred"Cutting up" means knife work into even dice, not pulling the meat into strings. Shredded turkey packs down and turns pasty under dressing; cubes stay distinct.
- Dress cold, and lateChill the diced meat thoroughly before mixing. Warm poultry thins mayonnaise and it separates. Dress within an hour or so of serving so the celery keeps its snap.
- Holding it safelyA dressed poultry salad belongs at or below 40F and should not sit out on a buffet more than two hours. If you use raw-yolk mayonnaise rather than a cooked dressing, use pasteurised eggs or a commercial mayonnaise.
- YieldNo quantities are given anywhere in the entry. As a working figure, 1 lb of trimmed cooked turkey with 2 cups diced celery and about 3/4 cup dressing makes six modest salad portions or fills roughly a dozen sandwiches.
Turkey salad sits in this book as a one-line variation on chicken salad, which suggests a readership that already knew the base preparation. Chicken salad appears in American cookbooks from the first half of the nineteenth century and was well established by the end of it; by 1900 the celery-and-dressing formula was familiar enough that a cookbook could simply say "the same as chicken salad" and be understood. The brevity here suggests a book written for someone who already knows the base and needs only the variation. That the sole variation concerns turkey's heavier fat and skin points to the cook's practical concern: how a large roast bird ate cold.