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Stewed Turkey with Noodles
Singe, draw and truss a turkey with the legs turned in. Melt some bacon fat in a stewpan, put in the bird, cover the breast with thin slices of fat bacon and fry it over a moderate fire until nicely browned. Pour some broth in with the turkey to three-fourths its height, add two or three small onions, a bunch of sweet herbs, a piece of celery root, four or five cloves and eight or ten peppercorns. Boil the liquor for ten minutes, then move the pan to the side of the fire, place some hot ashes on the lid, and stew the turkey until cooked. Prepare a garnish of noodles, finishing it with butter and grated Parmesan cheese, then place it on a hot dish. Remove the string from the turkey and place it on the dish with the noodles. Skim and strain the cooking liquor, thicken it with tomato sauce and boil it for a few minutes. Pour a small quantity of the sauce over the bird, and serve it with the remainder of the sauce in a sauceboat.
Turkey, Toulouse Peel from two to three pounds of raw truffles, chop the trimmings with one-half pound of fresh bacon, place them in a mortar and pound them, passing the mixture through a fine hair sieve. Singe and draw the turkey, stuff it with the pounded mixture, truss it, fasten a sheet of buttered paper around, place it in a pan and roast it in a hot oven, basting now and then with butter. Ten minutes prior to taking the bird out remove the paper and let it brown, dusting it over with salt. Place some slices of toast on a hot dish, place the turkey on them, garnish with roasted quails at each side and the truffles, seasoned and boiled in white wine, at each end, and serve with a sauceboatful of rich gravy.
Game. Canvas-Back Duck When served the breast only is carved. Stick the fork straight and firmly into the middle of the breastbone, commence from the neck down to the back, straight to the backbone, and around the back; then from the point of starting around the collarbone. Cut the joint off the wing. Commence cutting again from the point of starting; carefully and gently carving off the entire breast so that no meat remains. Proceed precisely the same with the other side. When finished there will remain only the carcass. The more quickly the duck is cooked the finer flavored it will be; and the hot dish for serving and also hot plates should always be ready before the ducks are done. The ducks should never be overdone.
A braised whole turkey, browned in fat and stewed in broth, served on buttered noodles. The verbatim text runs on into two unrelated entries — a truffled "Turkey, Toulouse" and carving notes for canvas-back duck — so read the first paragraph as the recipe proper.
- The hinge: this is a braise, not a boilAfter the initial ten-minute boil the pan is moved off direct heat and the lid weighted with hot ashes, which is a coal-range way of surrounding the pot with gentle top and bottom heat. In a modern kitchen, cover tightly and hold it at a bare simmer, or put the covered pot into a 325F oven. A rolling boil will shred the breast before the legs are done.
- Size the bird to the potA whole turkey that fits in a stewpan with broth three-quarters up its side means a small one — 8 to 12 lb. Anything larger belongs in a roasting pan or should be jointed.
- DonenessCook until the thickest part of the thigh reads 165F. For a 10 lb bird browned first, expect roughly 2 to 2.5 hours of gentle stewing; check at two hours, since braised poultry overshoots quietly.
- Sweet herbs and celery root"A bunch of sweet herbs" is a bouquet garni — parsley stalks, thyme, bay, tied. Celery root is celeriac; a few inches of celery rib plus a chunk of parsnip gets close if it is out of season. Tie the cloves and peppercorns in cloth so you are not fishing them out of the sauce.
- Fat baconThe barding slices are most likely meant as unsmoked fatback or salt pork rather than modern smoked streaky bacon, which will make the whole braise taste of hickory. Sheet the breast, tie it on, and remove before serving.
- "Thicken it with tomato sauce"In this period that means a cooked, reduced, roux-bound tomato sauce of the classical kind, used as a thickener and colourant — not pasta sauce or ketchup. A few spoonfuls of tomato paste loosened in the skimmed cooking liquor and simmered until it coats a spoon gives the intended effect.
- The noodlesFresh egg noodles, boiled, drained, tossed with butter and grated Parmesan. "Garnish" here has its older sense of the accompaniment that fills the dish around the meat, not a sprig on top. Allow about 1.5 lb dry noodles for a bird this size.
- YieldA 10 lb turkey with noodles serves 8 to 10. The strained sauce is generous; anything left over is worth keeping for the carcass soup.
- The Toulouse recipe below itTwo to three pounds of raw truffles is not a misprint for a hotel kitchen in 1896, but it is not a domestic proposition now. Treat that entry as a record of what the Waldorf served rather than a shopping list.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms rather than its stoves, and his 1896 book reads like a working transcription of a large French-trained brigade's repertoire — hence a turkey treated as a poularde, browned in fat, barded, and braised in a covered pan with aromatics. The instruction to bank hot ashes on the lid is the older braisière technique, in which coals above and below turned a covered pot into a small oven. The bird is served on buttered, Parmesan-dressed noodles.