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Fowl, Duck, Game, Hare: Turkey
No. 140. Dindo Arrosto alla Milanese (Roast Turkey) Ingredients: Turkey, sausage meat, prunes, chestnuts, a pear, butter, Marsala, salt, rosemary, bacon, carrot, onion, turnip, garlic.
Blanch for seven or eight K minutes three prunes, quarter of a pound of sausage meat, three tablespoonsful of chestnut purée, two small slices of bacon, half a cooked pear, and sautez them in butter; chop up the liver and gizzard of the turkey, mix them with the other ingredients, and add half a glass of Marsala; use this as a stuffing for the turkey, and first braize it for three quarters of an hour with salt, butter, a blade of rosemary, bits of fat bacon, a carrot, a turnip, an onion, three cloves, and a clove of garlic with a cut; then roast it before a clear fire for about twenty minutes; put it back into the sauce till it is ready to serve. Only leave the garlic in ten minutes.
No. 141. Tacchinotto all' Istriona (Turkey Poult) Ingredients: A turkey poult, ham, mace, bay leaves, lemons, water, salt, onions, parsley, celery, carrots, Chablis.
Truss a turkey poult, and cover it all over with slices of ham or bacon, put two bay leaves and four slices of lemon on it, and sprinkle with a small pinch of mace, then sew it up tight in a dishcloth, and stew it in good stock, salt, an onion, parsley, a stick of celery, a carrot, and a pint of Chablis; cook for an hour, take it out of the cloth, and pour a good rich sauce over it. It is also good cold with aspic jelly.
Two Italian turkey recipes from a book written when "turkey" often meant a bird of eight or ten pounds, not the twenty-pound supermarket monster. Read the timings with that in mind.
- The timings assume a small birdForty-five minutes braising plus twenty minutes at the fire will not cook a modern 14-20 lb turkey through. Work to internal temperature instead: 165F/74C in the thickest part of the thigh and in the centre of the stuffing, whatever the clock says. A 6-8 lb bird is the largest that suits this method comfortably.
- Braise first, then brownThe order is deliberate and worth keeping. The bird cooks gently in butter, wine and aromatics, then goes to fierce dry heat only long enough to colour the skin; the recipe specifies an open fire, so a very hot oven or a broiler, for the twenty minutes it allows, is the nearest modern equivalent. It then returns to the pot liquor to rest and stay moist.
- Turkey poultNo. 141 calls for a poult, meaning a young bird, considerably smaller than a mature turkey. A small whole chicken or a very small turkey stands in; a mature turkey will not cook through in the hour given.
- The cloth"Sew it up tight in a dishcloth" means unbleached muslin or several layers of cheesecloth, scalded and free of any detergent. It holds the ham, bay and lemon against the skin and keeps the bird's shape while it poaches. Kitchen twine and a double layer of cheesecloth do the job.
- Chestnut puréeUnsweetened chestnut purée, not the vanilla-sweetened crème de marrons sold for desserts. Tinned or vacuum-packed plain chestnuts mashed with a little of the braising butter are closer to what was meant.
- Marsala and ChablisA wineglass in books of this period is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so half a glass of Marsala is roughly 1 fl oz; dry (secco) Marsala suits the stuffing better than a sweet one. 'A pint of Chablis' here is an Imperial pint, 20 fl oz, and any dry unoaked white will serve.
- A clove of garlic with a cutA whole peeled clove nicked with a knife perfumes the sauce without dissolving into it, which is why it is fished out after ten minutes. Do not substitute crushed or minced garlic; it cannot be retrieved.
- Blanching the prunesSeven or eight minutes in simmering water softens the dried fruit of the period. Modern semi-dried prunes need two or three minutes, or a brief soak in the Marsala instead.
- YieldAn 8 lb bird with this stuffing serves 8-10. The braising vegetables and liquor should be strained and reduced for the sauce the recipe assumes but does not spell out.
The Cook's Decameron arranges its Italian recipes as a set of lessons told over ten days, in frank imitation of Boccaccio, and it sets out to persuade English households that Italian cooking was more than macaroni. Both dishes here point to the north: the Milanese stuffing of sausage meat, chestnut, prune and pear belongs to the sweet-savoury Lombard tradition that still shows up in Christmas tacchino ripieno, and the chestnut was for centuries a cheap staple of the Alpine foothills rather than a luxury. Turkey reached Italy in the sixteenth century by way of Spain, and was established well enough thereafter to be fattened for winter feasts in the north. The second title, all' Istriona, is obscure and may be a printer's mangling of a place name -- Istria, then Austrian, is one candidate -- but the technique of sewing a bird into a cloth to poach it in stock and white wine is a recognised period practice, used to keep pale flesh pale and the shape intact for serving cold in aspic.