Turkey Soup
Place the remains of a cold turkey and what is left of the dressing and gravy in pot, and cover it with cold water. Simmer slowly four hours, and let stand until the next day. Take oft what fat may have arisen, and take out with a skimmer all the bits of bones.
Put the soup on to heat until at boiling point, then thicken slightly with flour stirred into a cup of cream, and season Pick off all the meat from to taste. bones, put it back in the soup, boil up and serve.
A carcass soup of the kind every household made the day after a roast bird. The method is sound, but one instruction — the overnight stand — assumes a cold larder that most kitchens no longer have.
- Chill it, don't leave it out"Let stand until the next day" meant a stone larder or a cold pantry in winter. Cooked stock held between 40F and 140F is a good medium for Clostridium perfringens and Bacillus cereus; cool the pot quickly (an ice bath, or decant into shallow containers) and refrigerate. The overnight rest is worth keeping — it is what lets you lift the fat cleanly.
- The four-hour simmerPoultry bones give up their gelatin in three to four hours at a bare tremble. A hard boil emulsifies the fat back into the liquid and turns the broth cloudy and greasy; keep it at the barest movement on the surface.
- The dressing does the real workBread stuffing simmered into the pot adds body and seasoning at once — it carries the sage and onion of the original dressing, and whatever fat came with it. It also makes the broth murky. If you want a clearer soup, hold back most of the dressing and add it near the end.
- Straining beats skimmingA skimmer will not catch the small bones and cartilage that break loose over four hours. Pour the whole pot through a colander into a second pot, then pick the meat off by hand — safer and quicker than fishing.
- The cream liaisonStir the flour into the cold cream to a smooth slurry before it meets the hot soup, or it will lump. Reckon about 2 tablespoons flour to 1 cup cream for a lightly bodied soup. Once the cream is in, hold it just below a boil; the final "boil up" should be brief, or the cream may break.
- Season at the endLeftover gravy is already salted and reduces further over four hours. Taste only after the cream goes in, then adjust with salt, pepper and a little of the sage note from the dressing if it has faded.
- YieldThe recipe gives no water quantity, only 'cover it with cold water.' Working from a single turkey carcass with its trimmings and enough water to cover — roughly 3 quarts — you should end with something like 2 to 2½ quarts of finished soup, six to eight bowls.
This is a thrift recipe, and its lesson is deliberate: a young housekeeper was expected to know that the carcass, the cold gravy and the scrapings of stuffing were not refuse but the second half of the meal. Turkey was a holiday bird for most American households well into the twentieth century, roasted whole and picked over for days afterward, and soup was the last stage of the sequence — hot bird, cold sliced bird, hash or croquettes, then the pot. The finish with flour stirred into cream marks it as a cream soup in the Anglo-American manner rather than a clear consommé, a style that dominated household cookery of the late 1800s and early 1900s, when a thickened, enriched soup read as generous.