Home › Poultry and Game › Boiled Turkey with Celery Sauce
Boiled Turkey with Celery Sauce
If a turkey dressed in this way is not well managed it will be quite tasteless. It should be well trussed and tied, or else the legs and wings will be disarranged during the process of boiling. When the turkey has been cleaned, fill it with celery stuffing the same as directed for a roast turkey, putting a little of the stuffing in the breast also; and sew it up very securely. Wring a large square of cotton cloth out of cold water, and dredge the cloth thickly with flour. Pin the turkey in . this cloth, and plunge it in boiling water. Allow twenty minutes boiling to every pound; boil rapidly the first fifteen minutes, and then gently simmer until tender. Place the turkey, when done, on a platter, remove the cloth and skewers, drain well, and serve with celery sauce.
A large bird poached in a floured cloth — a technique that has all but vanished, though it produces very moist meat if the timing is watched. The original's schedule is the part that needs the most attention.
- The hinge: cook to temperature, not to the clockTwenty minutes per pound means over three hours for a 10 lb bird, which will leave the breast dry and stringy. A stuffed turkey is done when the thickest part of the thigh reads 175F and the center of the stuffing reaches 165F; at a bare simmer this is likely to be reached well before the book's time, so start checking at around 12-15 minutes per pound rather than relying on the clock.
- Why the clothThe wet cloth dredged in flour forms a paste seal that keeps the skin pale and intact and stops the stuffing leaking into the water. Unbleached muslin or a doubled cheesecloth works; skip the pins and tie it at both ends with kitchen twine.
- "Boil rapidly" is the one instruction to ignoreFifteen minutes at a rolling boil toughens the outer muscle and can split the skin. Bring the water to the boil, lower the bird in, then immediately drop the heat so the surface only shivers.
- Pot and waterYou need a stockpot that holds the bird with two inches of water over it — a 16 to 20 quart pot for anything above 10 lb. Salt the water well; unsalted poaching water draws flavor out of the meat.
- Celery stuffingThe recipe simply refers back to the book's roast turkey stuffing, which would have been a bread-based stuffing with celery; check that page for the actual proportions. Pack it loosely -- tightly packed stuffing in a poached bird takes far longer to reach a safe temperature than the meat around it. Cooking it separately in a covered dish is the simpler course.
- Celery sauceThe period sauce is a white sauce or veloute enriched with celery cooked soft and sieved. A cup of the poaching liquid whisked into a butter-and-flour roux, with pureed braised celery and a little cream, gives the intended result.
- Don't discard the liquidThe poaching water is a good, if pale, turkey broth once the fat is skimmed. Reduce it hard before using it in the sauce or it will taste thin.
- YieldA 10 to 12 lb turkey served this way feeds 10 to 12, with the usual leftovers. Boiled turkey slices cleanly when cool and keeps well as cold meat.
Boiling large birds was standard practice in English and American kitchens well into the twentieth century, and a boiled turkey or fowl with a white sauce often stood at the opposite end of the table from a roast at a holiday dinner, providing contrast in both color and richness. Celery was the natural partner: it was a prized, fairly expensive winter vegetable, sold in tall glass celery vases at the table, and its season coincided with the turkey's. The floured cloth is a trick shared with boiled puddings, where the same wet-and-dredged wrapping keeps water out of the food, though whether one practice was borrowed from the other is a matter of inference rather than record. The Butterick Cook Book belongs to the era's pattern-and-magazine publishing houses, which extended their household advice from dressmaking into cookery, and its poultry chapter assumes a cook confident enough to truss, sew and manage a bird of some size without much hand-holding — hence the opening warning that a badly managed boiled turkey is simply tasteless.