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Turkey Patties
Mince the flesh of some cold cooked remains of turkey, and season it with a little grated lemon peel and nutmeg, salt and pepper. Put it into a saucepan with sufficient cream and butter to make it of a proper consistency, and stir it over the fire until hot. Butter some small patty pans, line them with paste, fill them with the above mixture, place a paste cover on the top, and trim the edges, moistening and pressing them together. Bake the patties in a moderate oven. When cooked remove them from the tins, place them on a folded napkin or ornamental dish-paper placed on a hot dish, and serve.
A leftover-turkey dish from Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf kitchen, built on the same logic as a vol-au-vent: hot creamed filling sealed in pastry and baked only long enough to set the crust. The filling is already cooked, so the oven is finishing the paste, not the meat.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350-375F. If your pastry is puff rather than short, go to 400F for the first 15 minutes so the layers lift, then drop to 350F.
- Patty pansThese are small individual tart or muffin tins, roughly 2 1/2 to 3 inches across, not a large pie dish. A standard 12-cup muffin tin works; a mini-muffin tin makes canape-sized patties.
- "Paste"Nineteenth-century shorthand for pastry dough. Oscar's book assumes you have short paste or puff paste already made; two sheets of good all-butter puff pastry, or a double batch of pie dough, covers a dozen.
- Proper consistencyAim for a thick, spoonable mixture that mounds and does not run, about the density of thick creamed chicken. For 2 cups of minced turkey, start with 1/3 cup heavy cream and 2 tablespoons butter and add cream a spoonful at a time. Too loose and it will boil out of the seams.
- Cool before fillingThe recipe says to heat the mixture and fill at once, but hot filling melts the butter in the pastry and gives a soggy base. Warm it to melt the butter and marry the seasonings, then let it cool to room temperature before it goes into the shells.
- Grated lemon peel and nutmegUse the zest of half a lemon and a scant 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg per 2 cups of meat. Both are meant to lift dull cold poultry, not to be identified.
- Sealing and ventingMoisten the rim with water or egg wash, press firmly, and cut a small steam vent in each lid. Brush the tops with beaten egg if you want colour; the original does not call for it.
- Timing and yieldAbout 20 to 25 minutes, until the pastry is set and browned. Two cups of minced turkey with cream fills roughly ten to twelve patties, enough for four to six as a first course or a lunch dish.
- Leftovers ruleCooked turkey that has been refrigerated more than three or four days should not go into this. The bake is short and gentle by design and will not rescue meat that is past it.
Patties like these belong to a long line of small filled pastries the English-speaking kitchen took from the French petit pate, and by the nineteenth century they were a common genteel way to use up a carved bird: Eliza Acton and Mrs. Beeton both print similar formulas for veal, chicken and oyster patties. Oscar Tschirky, who was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf from 1893 and published his Cook Book in 1896, was cataloguing the repertoire a large hotel kitchen needed, and that repertoire included thrift. The instruction to serve on a folded napkin or ornamental dish-paper is period service: the paper absorbed grease and kept the pastry from sliding on the dish.