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Stewed Turkey with Celery
Clean and truss a hen turkey as for boiling, stuff it with veal forcemeat, place it in a large saucepan with plenty of hot water, and boil it gently until tender. When the turkey is done take half of the cooking liquor and put it into another saucepan with four well-washed heads of celery, and stew them until tender. Remove the celery from the liquor, put in the turkey, breast downward, and boil it gently for twenty minutes; then drain it, put it on a hot dish and keep it near the fire. Stir one ounce of butter into one tablespoonful of flour, put it in the celery liquor, stir it over the fire until boiling, then put in the celery cut up into short lengths, and warm it again. Pour the sauce and celery over the turkey, and serve.
A poached turkey rather than a roast one, finished in its own celery-scented broth. The method is sound, but the timings and the vessel assume a coal range and a bird larger than most home pots.
- The hinge: keep it at a bare simmer"boil it gently" here is best read as what we would call poaching, with the surface barely trembling rather than moving. A true rolling boil will shred the breast and leave it dry even while the thighs are still tough.
- Hen turkey and pot sizeA hen bird is the smaller of the two sexes, which is presumably why one is specified; in practice choose the smallest bird you can find, since it must sit in a pot with water to cover. Anything too large for your largest stockpot needs to be jointed or roasted instead.
- Veal forcemeatA standard nineteenth-century stuffing of ground veal, suet or butter, breadcrumbs, egg, lemon zest, parsley and mace. Ground veal is a special order in most places now; ground pork or a pork-and-veal blend behaves the same way.
- DonenessCook to 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, and check the centre of the forcemeat as well since a meat stuffing inside a poached bird heats slowly. Reckon roughly 15 minutes per pound, but go by the thermometer.
- Four heads of celeryA "head" is a whole bunch, not a rib. Four bunches is a great deal of celery by modern standards; two will flavour the liquor and give plenty to serve. Peel any tough outer ribs.
- The second twenty minutesThe recipe returns the cooked bird breast-down to the celery liquor and boils it gently again; since it is already tender, this seems to be about flavour and moisture, so err on the side of the gentlest possible heat, or let it stand in the hot broth.
- The thickeningOne ounce of butter to one tablespoon of flour makes a loose roux for perhaps a pint of liquor. Use only as much of the celery liquor as you want as sauce, about 2-3 cups, and reduce it first; the rest is excellent stock.
- YieldAn 8-10 lb bird with forcemeat serves 10 to 12. Poached turkey skin is pale and flabby, so carve in the kitchen and nap the slices with the sauce rather than presenting the whole bird.
Boiled or stewed turkey with celery sauce was a fixture of Anglo-American service dining, and it belongs to the same family as boiled fowl with parsley sauce or boiled leg of mutton with capers: a plain white meat, gently poached, dressed with a sauce built from its own cooking liquor. Celery was the natural partner because blanched celery was a prized winter vegetable in the late nineteenth century, sold in tall bunches and often served raw in cut-glass vases on the table.