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Fillets of Turkey with Soup
Skin the breast of a plump turkey, and slice. The slices should be nearly half an inch thick, and as nearly uniform in size as possible. Dip in beaten egg, then in crumbs; again in the egg, and once more in the crumbs. Set on the ice while you cook the rice.
Put one cup of clear chicken stock into a saucepan; add a cup of rice, one-half teaspoon of onion juice, and the same of salt, and simmer slowly until the liquid is absorbed. When the rice is tender add two tablespoons of butter; one tablespoon of grated cheese, and season to taste. Cover and let it stand at the side of the fire until the fillets are ready. Heat five or six spoons of pure salad oil slowly in a frying-pan, and when it boils, cook the fillets to a nice brown. Mound the rice in the center of a hot dish and arrange the fillets about it.
A turkey-breast cutlet, breaded twice and shallow-fried, served against a mound of cheese pilaf. The recipe is sound but two of its measurements need attention before you start.
- The rice liquid is shortOne cup of stock will not cook one cup of rice; long-grain white rice generally needs roughly two cups of liquid to one of rice. Whether the single cup is an error or assumes a cook who tops up as it goes is unclear. Treat the stock quantity as a starting point and keep hot stock at hand rather than following the ratio literally.
- Cut and poundHalf-inch slices off the breast, cut across the grain, are thicker than a modern cutlet. Pounding each slice to about a quarter inch between sheets of plastic gives even cooking and keeps the double crust from browning before the center is done.
- Double breadingEgg, crumbs, egg, crumbs is deliberate and worth doing properly: let the first coat set for a few minutes before the second, or the layers slide off in the pan. The chilling step ("set on the ice") is what firms the coating; twenty to thirty minutes in the refrigerator does it.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on a fine grater and use the liquid that collects, or press grated onion through a sieve. It flavors without leaving visible pieces in the rice.
- Grated cheeseMost likely a hard grating cheese, Parmesan or similar, though the recipe does not specify. Add it off the heat with the butter so it melts into the grains rather than stringing.
- "When it boils"Oil does not boil at frying temperature; the phrase means the surface shimmers and a crumb sizzles at once, around 350 to 365F. Five or six spoons in a wide pan gives shallow fat, so turn the fillets once.
- Cooking time and donenessPounded fillets take about three minutes a side to reach a good brown; turkey breast should come to 165F. Undercooked poultry is the risk here, and thick unpounded slices are what cause it.
- YieldRoughly four to six as a main course, depending on the size of the bird; the breast of a large turkey will give more fillets than a cup of rice will match. Hold finished fillets uncovered on a rack in a low oven so the crust stays crisp.
The title is a puzzle worth noting: nothing in the method involves soup beyond the cup of clear chicken stock used to cook the rice, and the dish is really a cutlet with pilaf. It belongs to a large family of turn-of-the-century American recipes that treat poultry breast the way European kitchens treated veal -- sliced, breaded, and fried in the manner of a Wiener schnitzel or a cotoletta alla milanese -- with rice bound by butter and grating cheese standing in for a risotto. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued its cook book in the early 1910s. "Salad oil" in the period usually meant olive oil sold for dressing rather than cheaper cooking fats, though cottonseed and other refined oils were also marketed under the name; specifying a "pure" one here suggests a dish meant to be a little refined.