Turkey Soup
Break turkey carcass in pieces, removing all stuffing; put in kettle with any bits of meat that may have been left Cover with cold water, bring slowly to boiling-point, and simmer two hours. Strain, remove fat, and season with salt and pepper. One or two outer stalks of celery may be cooked with carcass to give additional flavor. 6 cups White Stock III ¼ cup oatmeal 2 cups scalded milk
Two recipes are running together here: the carcass broth of the first paragraph, and a thicker oatmeal-and-milk soup built on Farmer's numbered White Stock III. Either works on its own; the ingredient line is the second version's whole shopping list.
- Bring it up slowly, and never boilThe instruction to bring cold water slowly to the boiling point and then only simmer is the point of the method. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and pulverises marrow into the liquid, giving a cloudy, greasy stock that no amount of straining will clear.
- "Kettle" means stockpotIn a book of this date a kettle is generally a large lidded pot for the range rather than specifically a water-boiling vessel. An 8-quart stockpot is right for one turkey frame broken down; a pressure cooker will do the same job in about 45 minutes at pressure.
- Remove the stuffing, and mind the timingFarmer is not being fussy. Bread stuffing left in a cooling bird is the classic vehicle for bacterial growth, and it also turns the stock murky and gluey. Strip and refrigerate the carcass within two hours of the meal, and simmer it the same day or the next.
- The oatmeal is a thickenerA quarter cup of oatmeal to 6 cups of stock is meant to cook to nothing and body the soup, in the Scots manner. Rolled oats will break down in 20-30 minutes of simmering; steel-cut needs closer to 45. Purée or press through a sieve if you want it smooth.
- Scalded milkScalding means heating to about 180F, just as bubbles form at the edge - not boiling. It was originally done to kill off souring organisms in unpasteurised milk; with modern milk it still serves to warm the dairy so it does not curdle or drop the soup's temperature when added at the end.
- Season lastA carcass stock reduces as it simmers and the salt concentrates with it. Season after straining and after the milk goes in, or you will overshoot.
- Removing the fatSkimming while hot is imprecise. Chill the strained stock overnight and lift the solid cap off in one piece; you also find out whether the stock has set to a jelly, which tells you the frame gave up its gelatine.
- YieldOne turkey carcass gives roughly 2 to 3 quarts of broth. The oatmeal version, at 6 cups stock plus 2 cups milk, serves six to eight as a first course.
Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book organises its soups around a set of numbered foundation stocks - Brown Stock, White Stock I, II and III - so that a dozen finished soups can be cross-referenced back to a handful of base recipes, a system that may reflect an ambition to teach cooking as a set of transferable principles rather than a list of dishes. This entry sits at the thrifty end of that structure: boiling down the turkey carcass was expected rather than clever. The oatmeal thickening in the second version points to the Scottish and North Country practice of using meal rather than a flour roux to give a soup body.