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Boiled Turkey with Oyster Sauce
Select a tender hen turkey weighing about seven pounds, have it carefully plucked, singed and wiped with a wet towel, cut off the head and feet and draw it without breaking the intestines; stuff it with equal quantities of stale bread and oysters seasoned with salt and pepper, or truss it unstuffed. Place it over the fire in a sufficient quantity of water to cover it, skim off all the scum as it rises, and boil the turkey gently for about two hours, or until it is tender. Place the bird on a dish, and serve oyster sauce in a sauceboat. Turkey, Bourgeoise Style Singe draw and truss a turkey, as for roasting, but do not stuff it, and roast it in a hot oven, basting it well with butter until nicely browned. Place a few slices of veal at the bottom of a deep stewpan, put in the turkey, cover it with slices of bacon, moisten to its height with stock or broth, put in a bunch of sweet herbs, and season to taste with pepper and salt, and let it simmer by the side of the fire. When cooked take the turkey out and place it on a hot dish. Skim the fat off the cooking liquor, strain it through a fine hair sieve over the bird, and serve.
Two recipes run together here: a poached hen turkey with oyster sauce, and a turkey braised over veal and bacon. Both assume a bird half the size of what a supermarket sells today.
- "Boil gently" means poachA hard boil will shred the breast and tighten the leg meat before the thighs are done. Hold the water at 180-190F, with barely a tremble at the surface, and skim as directed. Two hours is about right for a 7 lb bird; the thigh joint should read 170F and the breast 160-165F.
- Bird sizeA 7 lb hen turkey is smaller than most whole turkeys now sold. Look for a small hen turkey, or use a large capon or roasting chicken at 5-6 lb and reduce the poaching time to roughly 75-90 minutes.
- Stuffing inside a poached birdBread and oyster stuffing sealed in a submerged cavity absorbs water and turns to paste, and it slows the heat reaching the centre. Oscar's alternative -- "truss it unstuffed" -- is the better instruction; bake the dressing separately in a dish and pour some of the poaching broth over it.
- Oyster sauceNot the bottled Cantonese condiment. In period cookery this is generally a white sauce made with the cooking broth, sometimes enriched with cream, with poached shucked oysters and their liquor added. Add the oysters at the end and cook them only until the edges ruffle, about two minutes; longer and they go rubbery.
- Buying the birdPlucking, singeing and drawing are done for you. Save the neck, gizzard and heart for the poaching liquid, and keep the broth -- seven pounds of turkey makes several quarts of very good stock.
- Bourgeoise style: the oven"A hot oven" is usually taken to mean somewhere around 400-450F. You want colour only, twenty to thirty minutes, since the bird finishes by simmering.
- Bourgeoise style: veal and herbsThe veal slices are there to keep the bird off the hot metal and to add gelatin to the liquor; veal bones or a cheap cutlet do the same job. A "bunch of sweet herbs" is a bouquet garni -- parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied together. "Simmer by the side of the fire" means a bare simmer, best done in a 300-325F oven with the lid on, about 1.5-2 hours.
- StrainingA fine hair sieve is a fine-mesh strainer; line it with damp muslin if you want the liquor clear. Skim the fat thoroughly, then reduce the strained liquor by a third before pouring it over the bird, or it will taste thin against the bacon and veal.
- YieldA 7 lb bird with sauce and dressing serves six to eight.
Boiled fowl was standard middle- and upper-class fare in nineteenth-century English and American kitchens, and turkey treated this way came out pale, moist and sauced white rather than browned. The pairing with oysters reflects how cheap and abundant shellfish were in the Atlantic cities: New York oysters were a working-class staple well into the 1890s, sold from cellars and street stands, and they turn up in this book in soups, stuffings, sauces and patties. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated ma u00eetre d'h u00f4tel, published his collection in 1896, and it sits between two worlds: French-hotel technique on one side, plain Anglo-American household cookery on the other. "Bourgeoise style" is a borrowing from the French repertoire, where u00e0 la bourgeoise generally signals a homely braise with bacon and vegetables rather than anything grand.