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Roast Turkey
Wash, singe and draw a plump young turkey; rub it with salt and pepper inside and out, and stuff it with tender bread crumbs moistened only with melted butter or fat drawn from the fowl. The fat gives a better flavor and may be quickly melted. To one bowl of crumbs add one teaspoon of thyme or sweet marjoram, or both, one saltspoon of pepper and one teaspoon of salt. Chopped cooked onion maybe added, if liked, or half sausage meat and half bread crumbs may be substituted for the bread dressing. Mix the filling well, and after it has been pressed under the loose skin and into the body, skewer the fowl, draw the legs firmly against the body, fold the wings under the back, and tie all firmly to position with plenty of clean cotton cord. Now grease the turkey well with butter or olive-oil, dredge with flour, and place it on a trivet in a hot oven to sear quickly that its juices may not escape during the roasting proper. When the skin is well seared, lessen the heat, and baste the fowl frequently with equal parts of butter and hot water as soon as the flour upon the turkey has been nicely browned. An eight-pound turkey should be allowed three hours in a moderate oven, and it may be dredged with flour a second time about one hour before it is to be served. Serve with giblet sauce. - ROAST TURKEY WITH CHESTNUT STUFFING Draw and clean the turkey and put in a chestnut stuffing. Truss and roast the fowl as usual. See Stuffings for Poultry in this chapter.
A straightforward dry-heat roast with a bread stuffing bound only with fat, from the era before stock-moistened dressings. A few of its numbers need translating and one of its timings needs shortening.
- The hinge: fat, not liquidThe crumbs are moistened with melted butter or rendered turkey fat and nothing else. Adding broth or egg turns this into a wet dressing that steams rather than crisps, and slows the centre of the bird to heating through.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe calls only for a "hot oven" to sear and then tells you to "lessen the heat" to a moderate oven; period conversions generally put a hot oven around 400-450F and a moderate oven around 350F.
- Roasting timeThree hours for a stuffed eight-pound turkey is close to modern guidance (roughly 3 to 3 1/2 hours at 325F for a stuffed bird that size); go by a thermometer, 165F in the thickest part of the breast and thigh, and 165F in the centre of the stuffing itself.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. "One bowl of crumbs" is vague; reckon on roughly 6 to 8 cups of soft crumbs for an eight-pound bird.
- Drawing and singeingSupermarket birds arrive drawn and plucked, so these steps fall away. Do pull the neck and giblets from the cavity, and reserve them for the giblet sauce the recipe calls for at the end.
- Trussing cord"Clean cotton cord" means undyed butcher's twine. Kitchen string sold for trussing is the modern equivalent; avoid anything synthetic, which melts.
- Basting with butter and waterBasting with butter and hot water -- Equal parts butter and hot water, as called for here, was a common basting liquid in books of this period. It works, but opening the oven repeatedly costs heat; basting three or four times is plenty.
- The flour dredgeFlouring the greased skin, then flouring again an hour before serving, builds the mottled brown crust that period cooks wanted. It also thickens the pan drippings, so slacken the roux when you make gravy.
- YieldAn eight-pound bird with stuffing serves about six to eight.
Bread stuffing bound with nothing but melted fat is the older English pattern, and it survived in American household books well into the twentieth century alongside the sausage and chestnut variants offered here as alternatives. The Butterick Publishing Company was a dress-pattern house, and its cook book was aimed at the same middle-class readership as its magazines. The attention to trussing with cord, dredging, and searing before the long roast assumes a range whose heat could be banked down rather than dialled. Thyme and sweet marjoram, both named here, were among the common poultry herbs of the period; chestnut stuffing is cross-referenced at the end as the dressier option.